


The World, Upside Down

by UnmovingGreatLibrary



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 103,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29253504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnmovingGreatLibrary/pseuds/UnmovingGreatLibrary
Summary: This Gensokyo is not the original, but the result of somebody's failed attempt to rewrite existence.This reality is broken, and soon it will fall apart.In the weeks before that happens, shrine maiden Yukari Hakurei, ordinary magician Alice Kirisame, time-stopping maid Rin Izayoi, half-phantom swordswoman Komachi Konpaku, and living goddess Hatate Kochiya must either find a solution, or make their peace with whatever happens next.
Relationships: Alice Margatroid/Kaenbyou Rin, Onozuka Komachi & Yakumo Yukari
Comments: 58
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Standard stuff out of the way first: Like most of my fics, I've already written and edited this entire story, and all that remains is to polish it up a bit and post it. So, barring unforeseen circumstances, I'll be posting 2-3 chapters every Monday and Friday until it's done. The entire thing is about 150,000 words long, so that will still take about a month and a half. With the exception of a couple of 1-2 week breaks and the two small things I posted last year, this is what I've been working on since about November 2019. I've been waiting a hell of a long time for people who aren't me to read it.
> 
> That said, I've also spent about as long agonizing over just what to do as far as content warnings and stuff. This fic doesn't have a lot of actual violence or anything like that. But, as you might get from the description, it touches on some kinda heavy topics. How about this? The short version is, if you liked _The Death and Burial of Marisa Kirisame_ or _Teeth and Claws_ , you'll probably like this too, because the serious parts are serious in the same way that those were. If those were less upbeat than you normally like your Touhou, then you might be better off giving this one a pass. If you haven't read them, or if you just want a bit more context, you can mouse over this for a more spoiler-y sort of description. Either way, if that doesn't sound like the kinda thing you're in the mood for after surviving 2020, I understand, y'know?
> 
> On the other hand, I rewrote most of a chapter in here for a dumb joke about Komachi playing Uno with the goddesses of the Moriya shrine, so it isn't exactly all serious either.

Shrine maiden Yukari Hakurei had a problem: there was a leak in the shrine's roof.

It gave Yukari something to look at, though, since she was laying on the floor anyway. A film of water seeped down through the ceiling, then slowly bulged outward. When it got to the point where gravity won out, it plummeted toward the floor.

_Plop._

She'd placed a cup under the leak, and it was almost full. That was informative, though. It was a one- _gou_ cup, and it had taken about two hours to fill. That meant about twelve gou per day. On paper, that sounded bad. But, at least that much sake had gotten spilled on the floor during one of the parties in the spring, and it had been fine. Obviously the shrine could withstand having twelve gou of liquid spilled in it at least once. Twice wouldn't be too much worse, probably. Ten times would obviously be too much.

So, call it… eight days. She could afford to let the roof leak for eight days. _But_ , it only leaked when it was raining. Say that it rained one in four days. That would mean that, really, she just needed to fix it within thirty-two days. 

_Statistically speaking,_ she had a month to deal with the leak. There was no need to worry about it, then. Honestly, if she tried to fix it now, she'd look downright impatient. The appropriate thing to do was probably to empty out the cup and go take a nap.

Before she could convince herself to stand up, though, footsteps announced that somebody was approaching the front door. They stopped outside, stomping their shoes a few times before they slipped them off. They slid the door open… and froze.

“So, uh,” Komachi asked, “what are you doing on the floor?”

“Shrine maintenance.” Sitting up sounded like a lot of work, so Yukari didn't just yet. “What are _you_ doing out on a rainy day like this?”

“Y'know it stopped raining an hour ago, right?”

She hadn't, actually. Yukari eyed the cup again. If this wasn't the rate it filled at during the rain, she was going to need to re-do some calculations. She might, horrifyingly, have to patch the roof within a matter of _weeks_.

Komachi stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She slipped Roukanken off her back and tossed it aside; it made a very heavy sort of clatter as it landed in the corner. As she crossed the room, she grabbed her phantom half by the tail and yoinked it over in front of her, positioned perfectly to catch her fall as she flopped onto the floor. Settling in, she rested her chin on its squishy-looking bulk. “Comfier down here if you have a pillow or something, too.”

“The words of an amateur. I'll have you know that I reserve pillows for the _morning_. In the afternoon, I lay directly on the floor. Every half hour, I roll over. Variety,” Yukari finished with a yawn, “is the spice of life.”

“That bored, huh?”

“I don't know where you're getting _that_ from. Rolling over takes craftsmanship. Done right, it can be the highlight of my week. … yes, I'm that bored.”

“Well... if you want something to relieve the tedium, there're about two hectares of flowers back at the mansion that need pruning.”

“I'll pass.”

“Darn. It was worth a shot. How about this, then? I think I've found an incident.”

“Do you, now?”

“Uh-huh.” Komachi reluctantly rolled up to sitting, releasing her phantom half. It lazily drifted upward to orbit above her head. After a moment's thought, she asked, “Do you know when your birthday is?”

Yukari eyed her. This really didn't sound like the buildup to revealing an earth-shattering incident. But, if Komachi was trying to set up some dumb prank, it was still better than laying around and doing nothing. “December 22.”

“And how old are you?”

“Younger than an old lady like you. Isn’t that what matters?”

“Which makes your age…?”

“… twenty-four. Why?”

Komachi was undaunted. “What did you have for dinner last Wednesday?”

“I couldn’t say. Probably fish. I caught a few carp last week.”

“Hmm. I'm not sure if that's suspicious or not.” When Yukari's expression revealed that she was even less convinced, Komachi pressed on. “Fine, then. When is _my_ birthday?”

“Are you going to tell me where you're going with this?”

“Come on, just answer the question.”

“I don't know. Do you have birthday parties in the Netherworld? It seems against the spirit of things.”

“Yeah, well, here's the weird part. _I_ don't know what my birthday is.”

“If you're trying to prove that you have a bad memory, I already knew that.”

“… _and_ Lady Eiki couldn't remember it either,” Komachi continued, patiently. “It's not in any of the records, either. I'm still not sure when it is.”

That was a bit more noteworthy, but still. Yukari stretched a hand up, with the tip of her finger pressed in against her thumb. Gently, she flicked Komachi's nose.

“Ow, hey.”

“And here I'd thought you might actually have something.” With a sigh, Yukari drooped back down into place. The floor was calling to her again. If she got started on a nap now, she'd wake up just in time to go to bed.

“It's still strange though, right? I definitely used to know my birthday.”

“If strangeness were enough to make an incident, I’d never get any rest. I don't know if you've noticed, but practically everybody we know is strange.”

“Hmm… everybody, really?”

“Name two people that aren't strange.”

“Fine, but if I win, ya have to take this seriously.”

“Deal.”

“ _And_ buy me dango the next time we're in the village.”

“Couldn't you buy yourself all the dango you want?”

“It's not a treat if I'm paying for it myself, though.”

“I'm not sure if using Hakugyokurou's discretionary funds counts as 'paying for it yourself.'” With a sigh, Yukari tried to remember the contents of her coin purse. Or, rather, if her coin purse did in fact have any contents. She was pretty sure that she still had a bit, but it was maybe three hundred yen, tops. “Very well. I'll buy you all the dango that I can afford. If you win. Which, to reiterate, you aren't going to.”

Komachi stuck her tongue out, then tilted her head to the side, considering. “Hmm, let's see… Lady Eiki, for one. She's pretty serious most of the time.”

“She’s a ghost. Most of the villagers would panic if they saw her. I wouldn’t call her normal.”

“You didn't say humans only, so it still counts. Besides, wouldn’t it be weirder if she was a ghost and humans _weren’t_ scared of her?”

Komachi's phantom half drifted into view just in time for Yukari to give it a pointed prod. It wobbled in the air, like it was silently rebuking her, before continuing on its way. “You're biased.”

“No I'm not! Look, that's still only the first one anyway. So—“

A knock thumped against the shrine's front door, with enough force to make it rattle in its frame. “Yukari!”

Komachi stopped mid-sentence. Yukari... Yukari recognized that voice. She went still, and didn't answer.

“Yukari!” Another, even firmer, knock. At this rate, she was going to need to invest in a replacement door. “Are you in there?”

Moving slowly to avoid making any sound, Yukari raised a finger to her lips to signal Komachi to be quiet.

Komachi glanced from Yukari to the door and back. “Hmm, not sure what you mean,” she said, even raising her voice to do so. _The traitor_. With a self-satisfied grin, she leaned back and got comfy. “Seems to me you should answer your door. Rude to keep a guest waiting, y'know.”

“Ah, I was right. I did hear something,” the mysterious door-knocker announced. “Yukari, I have news that I think you'll want to hear.”

Yukari reluctantly rose to standing and slunk her way toward the door. Behind her, Komachi called, “Pretty sure this counts as forfeiting our contest, by the way!”

“No it doesn't.” Yukari reached for the door... then after a moment's thought, took a brief detour to grab her gohei before she pushed it open.

“You _do_ remember,” she said, pointedly shifting the gohei just to draw attention to it. “that I've asked you four times now to cancel my subscription to your rag? Really, you youkai aren't supposed to go senile, are you?”

Standing on her front step, Kanako didn’t look the least bit intimidated. As usual, she practically looked like a poster child for the tengu information corps. Her uniform was crisp. Her wings were immaculately groomed, black feathers gleaming in the light. Her tokin was sitting dead center on her head. Her notebook was indexed with a dozen color-coded tabs.

And, it was already open, with her pen poised to write. That was never a reassuring sign. “If you want to be uninformed and ignorant, I'm not going to stop you. Besides, this is personal business. I have a tip for you.”

“I'm listening.”

Yukari didn't make any attempt to hide her skepticism, but Kanako kept her cool. “Were you aware that one of the Moriya goddesses is giving a sermon in the village today?”

“I’m aware of many things, Kanako. I’m not sure why Aya’s habit of making a public nuisance out of herself deserves special mention.”

As soon as Yukari started talking, Kanako's pen was scribbling away. Kanako's writing contained a lot of shorthand, and reading upside-down didn't help matters, but she could definitely make out the words 'PUBLIC NUISANCE,' with a couple of underlines for emphasis.

“I didn’t know that this was an interview,” Yukari added.

“It isn’t. But, I’d be a pretty poor journalist if I didn’t keep any records, wouldn’t I? Now, the reason that I thought this was worth mentioning to you is that she’s showcasing her next big thing for the shrine.”

“Which is?”

“Hard to describe, actually.” As she finished writing, Kanako snapped her notebook shut and tapped the pen thoughtfully against her lips. “It’s a clay pot, but a strange one. There’s a blue glow around it, and mysterious things keep happening inside the aura. Since it’s so inexplicable, they’re planning to enshrine it soon.”

“And I'm sure that you're telling me this out of the goodness of your heart.”

“I'm telling you to keep you informed.” Kanako smirked. “You'll go under sooner or later if you never do anything to counter their attempts at gaining faith. That should be obvious, shouldn't it? Keeping yourself informed is vital. If I were you, I'd head down there to gather some information firsthand, Yukari.”

“And let me be clear, _Kanako_.” Yukari rested a hand on Kanako's shoulder—the hand that was also holding her gohei. The paper made a foreboding rustle as it shifted from the impact. “I would find it _very regrettable_ if I discovered that, for example, a youkai reporter had deliberately tried to manipulate me into fighting my rivals in the middle of the village, with a plan to use that fight as material for a juicy front page story. In fact, if somebody did such a thing, I'd have no choice but to exterminate such a wicked and shameless youkai.” Yukari released Kanako's shoulder. “… of course, since nothing like that is happening or is _going_ to happen, I'm sure there isn't anything to be concerned about, is there?”

Kanako stood her ground. “They're using it as an excuse to throw a festival. They even went as far as to commission fireworks from the kappa. Big ones.”

Yukari tightened her grip on her gohei. Kanako grew more confident. “They've already submitted their ads for it to all the big papers. Something like, 'the only shrine in Gensokyo that can show you true miracles.'”

Yukari kept her expression calm, but the annoyance was bubbling away in her chest. Such an affront to her pride could not be allowed to go unchallenged. At least, not if she wanted to get enough donations to eat by this time next year. “Komachi.” She released Kanako's shoulder. “Would you like to fly down to the village? I'm suddenly in the mood for some fresh air.”

* * *

Alice Kirisame stirred in her sleep, and discovered something deeply wrong.

She was being crushed. Something was pressing down on her. A warm, squishy weight, trapping her in place and restraining her. The air was hot and humid. No light seeped through her eyelids. She couldn't feel her left arm. This was exactly how her death had always gone in the nightmares—finally being defeated by a youkai, leaving her still barely conscious as it pinned her down and ate her piece by piece.

With a still-sleepy groan, she jolted in place, shoving at the weight atop her and opening her eyes. She still couldn't see, though. Her aggressor flailed back in response, and gave a surprised gasp as Alice's knee connected with something soft. The fearsome unseen assailant yowled, “What the hell, girl?!”

A pile of blankets was tossed aside. Light and cool air poured in. Rin was laying atop her, still halfway draped across Alice's body, and with a bewildered look on her face.

Alice blinked blearily against the light. She was in bed. In her own bedroom, even. Rin was sprawled across her body in a truly unnatural looking position, laying at an angle with her leg by Alice's head, her own head laying on a pillow by Alice's shin, and their bodies generally sort of half-tangled.

Alice's arm was asleep from being pinned beneath Rin's leg all night. And, her knee was still buried into Rin's chest.

_Oh._

Alice pulled her knee back. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Nightmares.” It was close enough.

“Must be some nightmares.” Rin rubbed her cheek in against Alice's shin, trying to find the exact right spot again, but it was apparently a lost cause at this point. With a yawn, she shoved the last of the blankets away and sat upright. The position left her straddling Alice's chest, but she didn't seem to be in any rush to move. “Real shame, too. Ya make a pretty good pillow, apart from the bit where you tried to murder me in my sleep.”

“You're being dramatic. One knee isn't going to kill you. … besides, I think you might have cut off all the blood to my arm.” Alice reached across, giving it a few sore rubs. Pins and needles were worming their way down toward her fingers, following the flow of blood. “So we're even.”

“That so, is it?”

“It is.”

“Hmm… takin’ off your arm ain’t a half bad idea. Could get that weirdo dollmaker neighbor of yours to make a replacement for it. Doll-style, I mean. Really pale skin, with them big ball joints.”

“How fashionable.”

“You ain't even heard the best of it! Also gotta get her to decorate it with a full sleeve tattoo. A buncha bones down your forearm, and then on the back of your hand? A great big skull, all—“ Rin spread her mouth open and bared her teeth. “—like it's fixin' to eat the viewer.”

“Well, unfortunately for you, I think my arm is going to survive.” Alice gave Rin's butt—still perched right on her chest—a reproachful slap. “Now please get off of me. You're heavier than you look.”

“Just means more of me to love.”

Rin blew a teasing kiss back over her shoulder, but relented, scooting off of Alice and making her way to the foot of the bed. Alice sat up, tentatively leaning on her still-recovering arm. Her bedroom was a mess… although Rin was mostly to blame for that, too. Rin’s uniform had a lot of layers, it turned out. Her dress was draped over the dresser: a giant, poofy thing with about half a dozen bows, a kilometer of lace trim, and patterned with bats and roses. There were about three more layers of her various underclothes strewn about. Her apron was, improbably, hanging from a shelf at eye level, apparently snagged on the corner of a mushroom terrarium.

And there were the knives, as always. _Lots_ of knives.

Alice rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Can you pick up your things, please?”

“Sure, sure.” Rin waved a hand dismissively, sitting up and stretching. Then, she blinked out of existence. There was the smallest flicker of a moment before she reappeared, now a meter or two away, fully dressed and only making a few final adjustments to her lacy white headband. The knives were gone, and Alice still had no idea where she hid them all. Then again, that dress had enough volume to smuggle half the contents of an armory. Rin dipped in a sarcastic curtsy, crossing her legs and lifting up the lower hem of her dress. “Shall I help ya with your own _vêtements_ , madame?”

“Mmh. I think I can manage. Breakfast would be nice, though.”

“Well, too bad. I ain't _your_ maid.”

“It was worth a shot.” Alice spotted her undergarments on the floor, and leaned over the edge of the bed to snatch them up. As she pulled them on, she added, “Do you have time to stay for breakfast, though?”

“See, funny thing about stoppin' time, is—“

“It's a yes or no question, dear.”

Rin puffed her cheeks out. “You're no fun sometimes. But, yeah, I oughta be fine. Lady Satori don't mind me goin’ out, as long as she gets her three square meals.”

“… doesn't that mean you need to go make breakfast for her?”

“Already took care of it. I’ll let ya decide for yourself whether it was before or after I got dressed.” Rin shot her an overstated wink. “So, what's for breakfast?”

“That's a good question.”

Once she'd gotten her camisole on, Alice decided that her outerwear could wait. She led the way to the kitchen, easing past the overfilled bookshelves that lined the hallway. On the way, she took mental stock of her food situation. She'd picked a lot of greens a few days ago, but they'd need their toxins neutralized before she could eat them. Eggs, eggs were fine. Her garden had given her a few aubergines. One of the kappa had traded her a box of live turtles in exchange for some help identifying ores, but she wasn't sure if she had the heart to kill a turtle.

Fried aubergine and eggs, then.

“How do you like your eggs?” she asked, as she lined a few of them up on the counter. She'd found them in a nest in the forest, but she still wasn't sure what species they were from. Speckled, and a bit of a creamy brown color. She'd have to save one and compare it against a few reference books. 

“Sunny-side up. Just like me.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had a sunny side, considering that you usually dress like you’re on your way to a funeral.”

“That ain’t got nothing to do with it. Folks just can’t recognize good fashion when they see it.”

Alice lined an aubergine up on the cutting board, swiftly slicing it. And, trying to ignore the feeling of Rin's gaze on her back. It was sort of hard, though. She wasn't used to doing this kind of thing with an audience in the first place, let alone with Gensokyo's only maid watching her. She had to wonder just how her skills compared. On the other hand, she knew Rin well enough to suspect that Rin was probably spending a lot more time staring at her butt than her hands. Some girls wore their hearts on their sleeves. With Rin, it was more like she'd run across the room to shove her heart in your face. You never had to wonder where she stood, at least.

Once both dishes were done, she set the table, and added a pot of tea to the mix, too. “Will western-style utensils be okay?”

“No need. Got my own.” One way or another, a dagger appeared in Rin's hand. Without breaking eye contact, she stabbed a slice of aubergine, brought it up to her mouth, and chomped a bite out of it.

“And I suppose you're going to eat your eggs like that, too?”

“Wanna see me try?”

Alice saw a mental image of Rin trying to look sensual as she licked egg yolk off of a dagger. The thought alone was enough to prompt her to silently stand up, retrieve a fork, and sit it next to Rin's plate.

Rin pouted. “Aw. I never get to have fun.”

Before Alice could reply, a soft knock echoed through the cottage. “Miss Kirisame! A moment of your time!”

Alice glanced down the hall toward the door. She didn't recognize the voice.

Rin stabbed another slice of eggplant and took a thoughtful bite out of it. “Expectin' company?”

“Not quite. … I'll be right back.” Toward the door, she shouted, “Just a moment!”

She was still barely dressed, after all. Hurrying into her room, she started tugging her clothes on, as quickly as she could without getting everything rumpled. Her outfit had a few layers, itself, so that was easier said than done. Her undergarments, then her blouse, then the multiple colorful sections of her dress, and finally the apron. She felt like she'd kept her guests waiting for a few minutes by the time she approached the door.

Hanging on a peg next to it were the mini-hakkero and her witch hat. She slipped the latter onto her head; it wouldn't do to be seen without the symbol of her trade, after all. After a moment's thought, she palmed the mini-hakkero, too. You could never be too prepared in the Forest of Magic.

Finally, she opened the door.

Standing outside were three humans, dressed in the fairly formal, but plain, yukata of household servants. All three bowed as she stepped into view. Without rising, the leader asked, “Are you the proprietor of the Kirisame Magic Shop?”

“I... am, yes. Alice Kirisame. Can I help you?”

“Your presence has been requested by Lady Hieda no Mokou. She would like to hire your services.” The servant lifted his head just far enough to make eye contact. “I wouldn't want to rush you, but I am led to believe that it's an urgent matter.”

* * *

“Attention, um! Ladies and gentlemen and... y'know. Folks. The Moriya shrine is, um, is inviting you to come see our new... manifestation of the gods' powers, or like... something weird, at least? I mean, just come and get a good look for yourself, you'll see what I mean. Outside world science definitely can't explain this kinda stuff, take it from me. Anyway, uh! We're going to be enshrining it soon, so if you come now, you'll be beating the rush and all...!”

Hatate Kochiya was nobody's idea of a shrine maiden. She was tall and gangly, in roughly the same way that a broom was. Even now, half a decade after moving to Gensokyo, her wardrobe still had a dozen t-shirts and a few pairs of jeans. Her modern clothes had been off-putting to the human villagers at first. Now, the villagers found her off-putting for entirely different reasons. Like the way she talked. Or the fact that she was prone to pulling out handheld games and fidgeting with them mid-conversation.

She could really go for that right now. She'd been giving this stupid sales pitch for well over an hour. It was boring, she'd run out of things to say about fifty-five minutes ago, and her throat was dry. 

The crowd of villagers gawking at her presentation had cycled members about six times. One of the newcomers craned forward, peeking at the thing over the heads of his peers. “So is it supposed to be a god, or...?”

“I mean, no. It's, um. It's…”

Hatate glanced back to the makeshift portable wooden shrine behind her. That by itself was normal enough. On top of it, though, was what appeared to be a pretty normal clay flowerpot. Most flowerpots, though, weren't wreathed in a seething cloud of blue... _spooky energy_. Most flowerpots also didn't suddenly look like an uncooked lump of clay when you saw them out the corner of your eye, or find a tiny rain shower centered right on them, or soundlessly turn upside down for no apparent reason, but this one did.

She definitely couldn't explain any of this. She decided to let it speak for itself.

“It's definitely all mysterious, right? Trust me, this isn't a ghost or something.”

“Yeah, just...” The man shifted uncertainly, glancing to the object again. “Doesn't really look like any god I've ever heard of.”

“It isn't a god, it's a yorishiro.” Aya had been supervising the whole presentation from a few meters away. Now, she walked up and loomed over the man with a smile. “Of course, since you seem like such an expert on gods, I'm sure that you already knew that, right?”

“Er. Well. Not really...”

“Oh, you don't say. I'm surprised. Well, I'm a god myself, so a friendly word of advice: in the future, you might want to be careful what you say about things like this. One slip of the tongue, and the next thing you know, you’ve drawn the gods’ ire. I’d hate to see it come to that, I really would. Your standard god can’t do too much, but who knows what one like this is capable of? House fires, failed crops, illness…”

“Er, no, I didn’t mean to give offense! I just—!”

“… impotency, lightning strikes, landslides...”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“Ah, it’s a bit too late for that, I'm afraid. I'm not the one you'd want to apologize to, anyway. Your insults were directed that way, right? Wouldn’t it be better to apologize to the god you insulted?” Aya gave a broad gesture toward the flower pot, which was now laying on its side and covered in a thin layer of dust.

The man dipped a deep bow toward it, clasping his hands together. “I'm sorry, o noble god!”

“See? That wasn't so bad, was it? Not bad at all.” Aya gave his shoulder a reassuring pat. “Although, between you and me, if you want to be _really_ sure—never hurts in these things!—I bet a small donation would go a long way toward showing your faith.”

The man looked down. Aya's other hand was held out expectantly. With a sheepish look, he dug into a pocket and dropped a few coins into her palm.

Aya eyed them. “Hmm, I see, I see. This is what the gods' forgiveness is worth to you, then?”

“It's... it's all I have on me.”

“Well, I'm sure this will be a good start.” After another pat on the shoulder, Aya stepped back and gave him a dismissive wave. “Tell you what, if it isn't enough, I'll smooth things over with the other god myself. As a personal favor, since you seem like such a good egg and all.”

“R-right!” The man took a step backward, obviously eager for his chance to escape. “Thank you!”

“Uh-huh. And please, remember to attend our festival in a week! Admission is free!” Aya called after him, but he was already disappearing back into the crowd. She looked back to Hatate. “Still getting the hang of this, huh?”

“Something like that, I guess.” Hatate shifted uncomfortably. Aya had never been anything but encouraging with her, but... Hatate's hair was frizzy even with a scrunchie binding it into a ponytail, and her gohei was poking out of a battered messenger bag covered in cute keychains. Aya was wearing a pantsuit and had one thumb hooked in her pocket in a manner that could only be described as _jaunty_. Aya was an ancient goddess who had risen from obscurity to conquer a decent amount of Japan, and Hatate's greatest achievement before coming to Gensokyo was being the editor of the school newspaper. It was kind of hard not to feel distinctly non-divine by comparison sometimes.

Instead of trying to put all of these nebulous feelings into words, Hatate settled for: “Think my throat's getting dry, maybe?”

“Ah, that would do it. Tell you what, why don't you take a break and I can take over for a bit.”

“Or, maybe we could, like... wrap up for tonight and go have dinner?” Hatate asked hopefully.

“No can do. Besides, think about it this way. If this ceremony draws a big enough crowd, it will cover dinner for a month.”

“Right, yeah. I'll just be... back here, then.”

“Sounds good. Now, let's see...” Aya handed her the man’s coins, then turned back toward the street. “Ladies and gentlemen of the human village! The Moriya shrine would like to humbly invite you…”

Hatate sighed with relief, made her way behind the exhibition area they’d set up, and leaned against a convenient stump that was back there. At least the worst was over. Nobody liked to hear themselves talk as much as Aya did, so she was probably off the hook as far as proselytizing went. On the other hand... Hatate slipped her DS from her bag and flipped it open. The battery light was red. Great. Time to be bored out of her mind.

She shot an annoyed look toward the altar. 

Aya had been quick to label the weird flowerpot a miracle and use it to boost shrine attendance. Hatate... wasn't so sure. She was the one who'd discovered it anyway, on the floor of the shrine's storeroom, glowing and rolling around like it had a mind of its own. It was definitely weird, but she didn't know about _miraculous_. She'd worked a good few miracles, herself. This didn't feel like one of them.

What it felt like was a disingenuous attempt to exploit the gullibility of under-educated villagers to squeeze them for money. Hatate had her own reservations about this whole 'shrine' thing in general, really. Past a certain point, accepting people's faith in exchange for the promise of blessings to come just started feeling like a transaction, and Aya was known to sprint right across that line. Religion was cool as a means to help people grapple with life's big questions and help them persevere in times of need, but it kinda felt more like they were running a successful extortion scheme.

Ethically speaking, the whole thing was a bit of a mess. If it wasn't for Lady Momiji, Hatate was pretty sure she would've become totally disillusioned about a decade ago. As it was, she felt maybe 70% disillusioned. 55% at a _minimum._

In the distance, Aya was still droning on.

“... show reverence toward such a god, and be rewarded with their blessings, you can do so at one of the Moriya branch shrines that we've installed around the village. Of course, visiting during the upcoming ceremony will be the best way to display your faith, but...”

And, she trailed off, looking up toward something in the sky. Hatate looked up too, just in time to see an irritated red-white streak approaching.

“ _Well._ ” Yukari came to a dainty landing, barely a meter in front of Aya. “What have we here?”

Aya leaned to the side, blocking Yukari's view of the altar. “A wondrous item that we're going to be enshrining shortly. Nothing the Hakurei shrine maiden needs to concern herself with, I’m sure.”

“Then certainly you wouldn’t mind if I had a look? As a matter of professional interest, of course.”

“Ah, wouldn't you know it? Just the worst luck today. We were actually just packing up.”

“Oh, then I can help out.”

“Yukari, Yukari. I can understand your excitement at seeing the newest addition to the Moriya shrine. Really, I can! But if that's what you want, you are _more than welcome_ to attend our upcoming festival to celebrate its enshrinement, with everybody else.”

“How generous of you,” Yukari said, in a sugary sweet tone that suggested she was weighing the benefits of stabbing somebody. “I'm definitely looking forward to seeing these 'miracles' that it performs, considering that you thought they were enough to justify picking a fight with my shrine.”

“Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall hearing about any miracles your shrine's produced lately. If there have been some and I just haven't heard about them, maybe you'd like some pointers on marketing?”

The two continued bickering. Hatate leaned back and settled into place against the stump. Might as well get comfy, since it looked like she was going to be here for a while.

Something moved in the sky. A quick glance confirmed it was Kanako—she'd already landed and was laying flush against a rooftop, lining her camera up for a shot of the scene. Hatate waved up at her. If she was going to be in the paper, she could at least make it clear that she wasn't part of this freak show.

A rustle of cloth announced that she wasn't alone. Looking back toward the source, Hatate found Komachi sitting on the stump above her, silently munching on a fistful of dango skewers.

“Oh!” Hatate jerked upright, hurriedly fussing over her hair and clothes to make sure she was presentable. “A-ah, hey, Komachi! I, um, I didn’t know you were gonna drop by.”

Here was the thing about Komachi, from the perspective of a scrawny nerd who’d grown up in the outside world: She had the toned physique of a swordswoman. She had _exactly_ the right amount of mysterious scars, and was pretty much always casually leaning against something. She carried a giant sword everywhere she went, and was some kind of weird half-undead thingy. Hatate was almost certain that, at some point in Komachi’s life, she’d jumped into a pack of bullies to defend some smaller kid from them. She’d never, like, _seen_ anything like that happen, but if anybody was going to do it, it was Komachi. If she wasn’t the love interest in some sappy manga, then she was at least YA novel territory, and if she couldn’t be either of those then Hatate honestly didn’t see what the genres were good for.

Komachi, seemingly unaware of just how many Scrappy Tomboy With A Heart Of Gold vibes she was radiating, swallowed a dumpling and left the now-empty skewer hanging from the corner of her mouth. “Hey there.”

“The, uh… the weather’s nice, huh?”

“Huh. Sure, I guess it is.”

Before Hatate could fish for another conversation topic, the smell of those dango hit her nose. There were more pressing matters at hand. Digging in a pocket, she fished out the coins Aya had given her. “… give you a hundred yen for one skewer.”

“Hmm.” Komachi eyed the yen. “See, the thing is, I won these from Yukari, and she kinda had it coming. It'd cheapen my victory if I didn't eat them all myself, wouldn't it?” She bit into another dumpling, tearing it off the skewer.

Hatate's tummy scolded her with a despondent growl. Gritting her teeth, she dug in another pocket and pulled out a few more coins. “ _Three_ hundred.”

Komachi no longer seemed quite so conflicted. “Hey, y’know what? All yours.”

Once the exchange was complete, Hatate popped a dumpling into her mouth. This was already more food than she'd gotten all day, ever since Aya had dragged her into the village for this extended sales pitch. Her stomach's growls of outrage were already growing quieter.

“Oh yeah, hey,” Komachi said, between bites. “Got a weird question for you: do you remember your birthday?”

“Eh? Sure. September 21, 1988.”

“Which makes you…?”

“… it's 2013. You do the math.”

“Okay, I guess that wouldn't change anyway. Hmm... did you have any pets growing up?”

“Like, personally? I had an African clawed frog in middle school. In a little terrarium and stuff.”

“What was its name?”

Hatate shot Komachi an uncertain glance. “Are you, like, trying to hack all my security questions, or what?” Komachi's blank stare told her that her joke hadn't landed. Oh well. “... his name was Arrow. Why?”

“C'mon, bear with me. Just a few more. Hmm. You're from the outside world, right? What was your hometown's name?”

“Seriously? It was...” Hatate frowned, staring into space as she gulped down her last dumpling. Despite giving it her best effort, though... “Huh. I can't remember. What the heck.”

“Yeah, see! I think there's something to it.”

“What, to me forgetting my hometown's name? I mean, Lady Aya could probably tell you, if she ever stops arguing.”

“Well, I—“ Komachi stopped mid-sentence, staring.

Hatate followed her gaze.

The flowerpot's usual jitters had gotten worse. The blue aura around it had expanded, covering half the altar. It was jolting between states every few seconds now—warping as it took on subtly different shapes, shattering and reforming. It filled with dirt and sprouted a flower; the flower overgrew the pot and wilted from deprivation before it vanished again, as the pot tumbled onto its side. The air around it flickered with little additions to its oddness—clouds of dust and miniature rainstorms and...

Hatate was almost certain that she saw a hand in there for a split second.

“Uh, hey,” Komachi said. “Yukari?”

Still deep in the argument, neither Yukari nor Aya responded.

The weird distortion was spreading now. The altar, too, started misbehaving. One side split in a deep crack. Soon, the source became clear, as dainty branches pushed their way outward, forcing it further apart. They started sprouting delicate leaves… and the crack snapped closed again, leaving no trace of any of this.

Hatate took a step away from it. Komachi followed suit. “Yukari, I think you need to see this...!”

The pot levitated into the air, slowly tumbling in place.

“Hey!” Hatate shouted. “Dumbasses!”

The argument came to an end. “Hatate, hey,” Aya said. “Lower your voice, okay? If the villagers hear you talk like that—“

The bickering pair had just turned around when the distortion in the air finally reached some critical mass. The flowerpot grew... jumbled, looking like some optical illusion. A tangled mess of shapes, all trying to occupy the same location. They vibrated so hard that they were left clattering against each other. A stiff breeze arose from its direction. Some unknowable tension squeezed the air around them, like a giant was trying to break the world over his knee.

And then, the tension resolved itself.

The pot exploded outward in a roar of clattering clay. Hatate scrambled back with a yelp, shielding her face, and felt several items ricochet off of her. They bounced off of each other, shattering and tumbling to the ground. The noise had seemed impossibly loud, but after a mere few seconds, it was already subsiding. Hatate lowered her arms from her face, using a hand to wave away some of the dust that had been kicked up by the mess.

In front of her was… pottery, mostly? A pile of pots, plates, vases, jars, cups, mugs, bowls, and urns. _Lots_ of broken shards, and some of them looked like they'd been broken before they appeared. But also, slightly more unusual things. Statuettes, roofing tiles, candleholders, pipes both for smoking and plumbing, plaques... she even saw an ocarina poking out of the side. The only unifying theme seemed to be that they were all made of clay.

On the far side of the pile, Yukari and Aya were staring at it with as much bewilderment as Hatate felt. For a few seconds, nobody on the entire street dared to say a word. The silence was a sharp whiplash from the clatter of a ton or two of pottery exploding out of nowhere.

“So. Like,” Hatate said, easing herself out of fight-or-flight mode. “ _That_ just happened.”

“It sure did.” Komachi stepped forward and prodded an ashtray with the tip of her shoe. When it didn't do anything suspicious in response, she gave it a kick back toward the heap.

“I might guess that you weren’t expecting that?” Yukari asked.

“You could say that, yeah.” Aya had to step around the pile to even be visible. “Everything okay over there, Hatate?”

“Huh? Yeah, I'm fine. But, um. Seriously, what the hell?”

“Something's going on. I knew it. Hey, speaking of which.” Komachi looked to Aya. “Do you remember the name of Hatate's hometown?”

Yukari sighed. “Komachi, I really don't think this is the time.”

“Er. Hmm.” Aya crossed her arms, looking increasingly annoyed at her failure to remember. Finally, she conceded, “It seems like I've forgotten?”

Komachi was modest enough to only shoot Yukari a brief I-told-you-so look before she continued. “And we all agree that _this_ is pretty weird too, right?”

“I think this is a lot weirder than the memory thing, personally,” Hatate said. “So, what, you think they're, like, connected or something?”

“I dunno. But it would be a heck of a coincidence for two different things like this to happen on the same day, right?”

“Even if they're unrelated, this probably deserves some investigation.” Yukari sounded reluctant to make the admission.

“It's a real shame and stuff. I really felt like I was going to hit my stride with all of this preaching after two or three hours. Er.” Hatate paused. “I mean, if you think it's okay for me to leave, Lady Aya. Incident resolver-y things and all, you know?”

Aya grimaced. “Yeah, I know. Don't worry, I'll get Momiji down here and we'll have this cleaned up in no time. You just go make us proud doing your shrine maiden thing, okay?”

“Right, yep. So!” Hatate gave Komachi a congenial slap on the back. “It isn't like we're going to find this stuff by, like, flying out into the wilderness and shooting fairies, so want to start by asking around the village? Y'know, see if anybody's seen anything strange, stuff like that. Maybe I can take everything east of the river—“ Where there was the ramen place that had a half-off special tonight. “—and you guys can take the west side?”

Yukari stared at her, clearly trying to figure out if there was some trick here that she wasn't spotting. She sighed. “I can't think of any better way to approach it. It isn't like we have any other lead. Meet you back here around nightfall?”

“Deal!” Hatate flicked her now-empty skewer back over her shoulder, stifling a grin. Cheap dinner and a reprieve from sermonizing. Any problems that were going on couldn't possibly outweigh _that_.


	2. The Inhabitants of Gensokyo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this is a lot. For the most part, though, I tried very hard to make it so that you shouldn't _need_ to have this list memorized or anything. I tried making it pretty clear what role any given person is filling the first time or two that they show up. But, the reference is here should you need it.

#### Hakurei Shrine

  * Ran (Calculating Goddess of the Hakurei Shrine)
  * Chen (Black Cat Apprentice Goddess)
  * Yukari Hakurei (Elusive and Two-Faced Shrine Maiden)



#### Forest of Magic

  * Alice Kirisame (Seven-Colored and Tactical-Minded Magician)
  * Marisa Margatroid (High-Firepower Puppeteer)



#### Hakugyokurou

  * Eiki Saigyouji (Supreme Ghost of the Netherworld) 
  * Komachi Konpaku (Half-Human, Half-Phantom, Half-Diligent Gardener)



#### Scarlet Devil Mansion

  * Satori Scarlet (Eternally Lonesome Scarlet Moon)
  * Koishi Scarlet (Closed-Hearted Sister of the Devil)
  * Rin Izayoi (Perfectly Macabre Maid)
  * Utsuho Hong (Earth-Rending Gatekeeper)



#### Youkai Mountain/Genbu Ravine

  * Aya Yasaka (Self-Serving and Troublesome Mountain Goddess)
  * Momiji Moriya (The Most Diligent of Native Gods)
  * Hatate Kochiya (Modern-Day Shrine Maiden of the Human World)
  * Mamizou Kawashiro (Shrewd and Surprising Kappa Engineer)
  * Kanako Shameimaru (Scheming Reporter of Fantasy)
  * Suwako Himekaidou (Thoughtography Reporter Looking Forward to Retirement)
  * Sanae Inubashiri (Upbeat Patrol Tengu)



#### Human Village (and environs)

  * Hieda no Mokou (Nine-Generation Immortal Human Sage)
  * Akyuu Kamishirasawa (Half-Beast Savant)
  * Rinnosuke Motoori (Modest and Content Bibliophile)
  * Kosuzu Morichika (Junk Collector with a Deciphering Eye)



#### Bamboo Forest

  * Fujiwara no Keine (Bookish Hermit of the Bamboo Forest)
  * Patchouli Yagokoro (The Unmoving Brain of the Moon)
  * Remilia Houraisan (Inhuman Princess of the Full Moon)
  * Flandre Houraisan (Destructive Sinner of the New Moon)
  * Sakuya Udongein Inaba (Perfectly Lunatic Rabbit)
  * Meiling Inaba (Colorful Rabbit of Good Fortune)



#### Underworld

  * Eirin Komeiji (An Eye Feared By All)
  * Kaguya Komeiji (The Satori Who Sees Eternity)
  * Reisen Kaenbyou (Overworked Hell Cat)
  * Tewi Reiuji (Divine Flame of Mischief)



#### Myouren Temple

  * Miko Hijiri (Supreme Buddhist of the Youkai Temple)
  * Seiga Toramaru (Wicked Tiger Representing Bishamonten)
  * Futo Kumoi (Youkai Monk of Esoteric Arts)
  * Tojiko Murasa (Beached Ghost of the Drowned Dead)
  * Yoshika (Eloquent Mouse Who Serves Two Masters)



#### Senkai

  * Toyosatomimi no Byakuren (Entirely Too Enlightened Taoist)
  * Shou Kaku (Noble Hermit with Wicked Arts)
  * Nazrin Miyako (Crafty General Who Transcends Death)
  * Mononobe no Ichirin (Ascetic Hermit of Old Japan)
  * Soga no Minamitsu (Vengeful Spirit of an Undying Grudge)



#### Ministry of Right and Wrong

  * Yuyuko Shiki (Supreme Judge, Napping in Paradise)
  * Youmu Onozuka (Shinigami with a Sharpened Scythe)



#### ???

  * Reimu Yakumo (Carefree Fox with an Absent Master)




	3. Chapter 2

“Huh, this dinky little place? Don't look like much of a manor to me.”

Rin put her hands on her hips and leaned back, peering at the building as she did so, like she was hoping that maybe she'd missed some context. Before she could make another faux pas, Alice silently took her hand and tugged her along, following after the group of retainers leading the way into the Hieda manor.

Rin had come along, of course. She seemed to have a skill for ending up wherever she could cause the most damage.

Alice surreptitiously leaned in when they were just out of earshot. “Please let me do the talking in here, okay? I'm not sure if you're aware, but the Hieda family is important within the village.”

“Ain't all that interested in chatting with some kid anyway. She's all yours, I promise.”

Rin leaned in and gave Alice a reassuring peck on the cheek before pulling back, but Alice wasn't all that convinced. Nothing about this situation was normal. She'd never had villagers come all the way into the Forest of Magic to summon her before. Summoning her to the Hieda manor was even stranger. She knew Mokou, of course, but this didn't really seem like a social call. Something was wrong. It had to be.

The retainers led the way down a long hall, then filed in to stand on either side of a door. One pulled it open, bowing with an inviting gesture. Seemed like this was the place. After taking a breath to steady herself, Alice turned the corner and stepped through the door. Rin trailed along behind her.

The room itself was pretty plain—one wall was covered with scroll-filled cubbies, and there was a broad kneeling table in the middle for reading them. A few delicate-looking flower arrangements and a single wood block print hanging on the wall gave the room that expensive, but minimalist feeling.

 _Very_ expensive, actually. Alice knew which flower shop the Hieda family's retainers frequented. If they switched out those arrangements every week or so, their flower budget was probably bigger than Alice's entire income. Probably best not to mention it to Rin, though. It would inevitably lead to some comment about how Lady Satori kept _loads_ more flowers than this around.

She was just starting to consider whether it might be worth offering to cast some longevity spells on the flowers in exchange for a cut of the savings, when the door on the far side of the room slid open. A servant stepped in, lightly cleared her throat to draw attention to herself, and stepped aside.

Hieda no Mokou shuffled into the room, followed by Akyuu Kamishirasawa.

 _One_ of these wasn't all that surprising, at least. Mokou looked the same as ever, frozen in the eternal image of youth. Alice wouldn't guess that she was a day over twenty, if she didn't know better. Her robes had the understated elegance of somebody who had nothing to prove by ostentatious displays of wealth. Her hair was up in a tidy bun, held by two silver pins. She looked every bit like the type of person who should live in a manor like this.

Akyuu, on the other hand, looked out of place here. Her usual teacher uniform didn't exactly match the decor. She looked like she hadn't slept in days, and she maintained a careful distance from every single piece of art, like she was afraid she'd break something that her meager savings couldn't cover.

“Afternoon!” Rin said, shooting a broad wave toward Mokou. “You the head honcho of this place?”

“Something like that.” Mokou gave a soft grunt of effort as she eased herself down to kneel at the table.

“Real nice place ya got here!”

“... thanks.”

Alice shot Rin an exasperated glance. In response, Rin just shrugged and mouthed back, _Trying to be polite!_

Mokou propped herself up with an elbow on the tabletop—not the most elegant of sitting positions, but presumably one got a lot of leeway when they were the immortal head of the richest family in the village. “I wasn't expecting you to bring a guest.”

“Ah, er. I'm sorry,” Alice said. “Rin is my—a close friend of mine, that is. She was visiting when your servants arrived, so she offered to come along.”

“By visiting, she means I spent half an hour smoochin’ her tummy last night!” Rin proclaimed, sounding very proud of herself.

Mokou and Akyuu both stared at her in mute disapproval. Alice shrank down and really hoped that she wasn't blushing as hard as she felt like she was.

Mokou glanced to her. “... is she trustworthy? This matter is kind of important to the future of the human village.”

“Eh?!” Rin clasped a hand to her chest, looking offended. “What's that supposed to mean? I'm just as human as you, sis. Maybe more!”

“You work for that vampire. Kind of makes your loyalties questionable.”

Alice rested a steadying hand on Rin's shoulder. “I'll vouch for her. She... may be lacking in tact, but anything that you can tell me, you can tell Rin. Now, er. I was led to believe that you wanted to hire my services?”

“Right...” Mokou didn't look entirely pleased about dropping the matter of Rin, but moved on. “I want you to guard the manor tonight.”

“Guard work…?”

“Think you heard me.”

“Right, er.” Alice cleared her throat. Time to put on her entrepreneur hat. “I'm sure I can handle any job you might have for me, but... if you only needed your manor guarded from thieves, I assume your own servants could handle that.”

“They could.”

“So I assume that you're expecting supernatural trouble?”

Mokou grumbled under her breath and looked to Akyuu for help.

Akyuu stepped forward. In a much more diplomatic tone, she said, “Miss Hieda and I are going to be busy this evening. Some people might try to interfere with what we're doing. If that happens, we'd like you to stop them.”

“And who would that be?”

“We don’t actually know.”

“And I suppose you won’t tell me what you’re doing, either.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“That sure don't sound suspicious,” Rin said.

Alice crossed her arms, looking over the two with a scrutinizing gaze. “And while I'm sure I can handle anything that comes this way, if you were expecting a youkai attack, I'd expect you to go to the Hakurei shrine first.”

“This job needs...” Akyuu hesitated. “Discretion. What we're doing is in everybody's best interests, but nobody but Mokou and myself can know what we’re doing beforehand. I didn’t think that Yukari would find these terms very agreeable. … or if she did, she’d snoop around somehow and make things worse.”

“You’re probably right.”

Mokou leaned forward. “But a businesswoman should be able to take a job without caring too much about the details.”

“I'd definitely _like_ to know the details. You really can't expect me to agree to all this subterfuge without any guarantee that—”

Alice stopped mid-sentence, as Mokou pulled a stack of bills from one pocket of her robe. She held it up and fanned them apart. It didn't take much mental math to reassure Alice that she was looking at a substantial payment. Vaguely modern currency was a rarity in and of itself. It had been a while since she'd seen that many zeroes in one place, and she was pretty sure she'd been studying astrophysics when it had happened.

Alice cleared her throat. “The Kirisame Magic Shop prides itself on discretion, of course.”

“Thought so.” Mokou turned her gaze toward Rin. “What about you?”

“Me? I've already got a boss.”

“It's a one-night job. Could probably use the extra help, too.”

“You're expecting something that big, huh?”

“We don't know what to expect.”

“I'm hearin' _real_ big.” When Mokou refused to comment further, Rin grinned. “Sounds like a good time, sister. Count me in.”

* * *

“Of course. Thank you for your time. If you do notice anything amiss, please let me know.”

Yukari waited until her back was turned to sigh out her disappointment. Another round of questioning, and another complete lack of leads. She made her way back across the street to where Komachi was waiting for her, leaning against a storefront.

“I’m guessing that you didn’t have any luck, either.”

Komachi shook her head. “The only weird thing they've noticed today is the big pile of pottery.”

“And as far as the memory issues... it occurs to me that there are some flaws with asking people to tell us about things they _don't_ remember.”

“Huh? But if they did remember them, there wouldn't be any problem, right?”

“Never mind.” Yukari pushed off of the wall and looked out over the street. Nightfall was approaching fast, and the crowds were starting to thin out. Soon, the streets would be empty... or mostly empty, at least. The bars would start filling up before long, so the foot traffic wouldn't die down entirely until well into the night. But, quizzing drunk people about their memory seemed like it would be even less productive than this. “I think we might have to accept that we aren't solving this tonight.”

“Seems like it.”

Yukari pursed her lips with annoyance. If she had any solid lead at all, she could always resort to the time-honored Hakurei tradition of fighting vaguely related youkai until one confessed to something. In this case, she wouldn't even know where to begin. Nothing to do but give up and go home until more clues turned up. Who knew, maybe whatever was going on would clear up on its own.

“I suppose that's that, then. I think I'm going to visit Suzunaan before I go home, though. There's no need for you to stick around.”

“Don’t we still need to meet back up with Hatate?”

“She’s a smart girl. I’m sure that she’ll figure it out.”

“Come on, she also deserves better than standing around for twenty minutes waiting for us to show. I’ll go talk to her before I leave town. What do you need at Suzunaan, anyway?”

“This might surprise you, but to rent books.”

“Huh…”

Judging by Komachi's tone, she didn't understand the appeal. She still followed along as Yukari started down the street. It was, admittedly, a bit more of a walk than she'd sold it as. Halfway across the village, through zig-zagging streets that only added to the distance. Normally, Yukari would just fly, but walking felt appropriate tonight. Besides, if there really _was_ some kind of incident brewing, it wouldn't hurt to make sure that everybody saw the Hakurei shrine maiden out and about. It gave the impression that she was patrolling the village to protect them from dangers, probably. Nobody else needed to know that she was just looking forward to the next installment in the series she'd been reading.

By the time that Suzunaan came into view, Rinnosuke was already outside, packing in the store's signboards and otherwise getting ready to close up for the night. She picked up the pace a bit, reaching the door to make her presence known before he could get back inside. “Good evening, Rinny. And how is business?”

Rinnosuke flushed and looked aside, fidgeting with his glasses. “Miss Yukari, I'm pretty sure I've asked you not to call me that.”

“Does sound kinda demeaning.” Komachi rested a hand on her hip and looked down at him, critical and serious. “Hmm, how about 'Rinners'?”

“Too forced,” Yukari said. “'Rinno'?”

“'Rin-rin',” Komachi countered.

Rinnosuke thrust a hand between them, interrupting the feedback loop they'd gotten into. “ _Rinnosuke_ is fine, thank you...! Er, did you need anything, though?”

“Well,” Yukari said. “We were in the area anyway, so I thought that this would be a perfect time to stop by and make sure those youma books aren't causing you any trouble.”

“They've been fine, thank you. Will that be all?”

Yukari eased herself over and slipped a foot in the door, making sure he couldn't shut them out. “Then I'm sure that it won't hurt if I conduct a quick inspection, right?”

“... you still owe me seven hundred yen in late fees, you know...”

“Well then, consider this payment. Not every business gets personal inspections from the Hakurei shrine maiden.”

Before Rinnosuke could protest further, Yukari slipped past him and stepped into the shop. Komachi followed her, shooting Rinnosuke a smile that was half sympathetic and half teasing. Realizing that he was better off just embracing his fate, Rinnosuke flipped the sign outside the door to 'CLOSED' and followed them inside.

Inside, the shop attested to just how close Rinnosuke had been to closing up for the night. Some of the lanterns along the wall had already been extinguished, and stacks of books were laid out in the middle of the floor, apparently ready to be re-shelved. Yukari didn't let such minor things bother her. First things first: checking the shop's reference section for any new arrivals from the outside world. She knew right where it was. It also barely covered half a shelf, so it didn't take long to look over it.

Lady Ran, the shrine's incorporeal and unfathomably wise goddess, hadn't set a whole lot of guidelines for her shrine maidens. One of the few things she had insisted on, though, was that they be well-educated. As a young, newly-recruited shrine maiden, Yukari had barely even gotten time to settle in before the goddess started trying to drill the kana into her. After those were math, philosophy, and an ever-escalating series of kanji. These days... Yukari slipped a mildewing outside world textbook from a shelf and flipped it open. The page was covered in explanations and formulae about calculating how far things would travel if launched into the air at an angle. Yukari understood _most_ of it. She'd also read it twice already, and wasn't bored enough to revisit this one just yet. She slipped it back onto the shelf.

"Is this really what you do for fun?" Komachi asked. She pulled a book from the shelf at random, then panicked when the cover started falling apart in her hands.

Yukari leaned over and pushed it back into place. "... it is, but it helps if you pick books that aren't older than Gensokyo."

Komachi shrugged, and they moved on.

Yukari moved to the back of the store to inspect the youma books. Might as well make sure that they weren't going to cause her any trouble while she was here. Not that she could tell all that much by looking at them. A real shame. In theory, they could make for some interesting reads. In practice, most of the writing was indecipherable squiggles.

No youma books moving or emitting creepy auras. The layer of dust accumulated on them looked like it hadn’t been disrupted in weeks. That was about as safe-looking as things got around here. On to the sci-fi.

“Rin-rin,” she said as she walked, “have you noticed any strange gaps in your memories today?”

Rinnosuke had taken up position at his desk near the front, busily doing something with the day's ledger and doing his best to pretend that the two unwelcome customers weren't there. "Are you really going to stick with 'Rin-rin'?"

"That depends on whether you answer the question."

Rinnosuke sighed, clearly reluctant to give in to this extortion. Begrudgingly, he turned to face her, crossing his arms. “I can't think of any. Why?”

“You can remember your grandmothers' names?”

“Yes.”

“And what you had for breakfast yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“And what the first youma book you added to your collection was?”

“ _Yes._ ” Rinnosuke pulled his glasses off to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Miss Yukari, are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“Seems like something strange is going on,” Komachi said. “Something about people’s memories, I mean. … at least, with _our_ memories. I guess we haven’t had much luck finding other people with the same problem.”

“Isn't there always something strange going on in Gensokyo?”

“A bad sort of strange,” Yukari said. “An incident. Like the time that it was still warm enough to go swimming in January.”

“Or when the udon shop stopped honoring those vouchers they gave out for a free lunch special,” Komachi added.

“I don't think that one was an incident.”

“You never know. What if there's some kind of horrible anti-lunch youkai around?”

Yukari turned back to Rinnosuke. “I think that you get the idea, though?”

“I still don't think I've had any memory problems,” Rinnosuke said.

“Hmm. Has anything else strange happened today?”

“I've been inside all day. How would I know?”

“Humor me, Rin-rin.” Yukari walked up to the desk and slid a book onto it. “I'm sure that a bright young lad like you must overhear things. This library does get customers other than me and Alice, doesn't it...?”

Rinnosuke sighed, but tilted his head back, thinking. “Still, though. Umm... the Hieda household sent most of their servants home in the middle of the day?”

“Did they?”

“One of the washerwomen said so. Kind of locking the place down, I guess?” When Yukari just gave him a prompting look in return, he grew a bit more flustered. “That's really all I heard, though! She had company come over, then sent most of the servants home and the guards are turning everybody else away!”

“Company?”

“Ms. Kamishirasawa, I think. The schoolteacher.”

“Hmm...” Yukari exchanged a meaningful glance with Komachi.

“Maybe they're, er...? You know.”

“Mokou? No, I don't think so. She's about as romantic as a doorknob.”

“Maybe they just wanted to get some peace and quiet.” Muttering, Rinnosuke added, “It must be nice.”

Yukari pretended not to hear him. “Gaps start appearing in our memories, right as the youkai who can erase history makes a visit somewhere under strange circumstances…”

“Do you think they're connected?” Komachi asked.

“If not, then it's an interesting coincidence.”

“But Mokou…? I've only met her once, but she didn't seem like a troublemaker. She let me pet her cats so long that I fell asleep.”

“Certainly the sign of a good heart. But, it's worth looking into, don't you think?” Yukari held the book up, waggling it toward Rinnosuke. “Rin-rin, be a dear and put this one on my account. Komachi and I need to make a social call.”

* * *

Gensokyo's history was spread out before Akyuu like a tapestry.

Or, at least, that was the simile she used when describing it to others. If it were an actual tapestry, though, it would have been a pretty bad one. Here was the patriarch of a family, with twenty grandchildren indirectly owing their existences to him. The thread of his influence split into a tangle of smaller ones, which themselves split further as each new generation's influence rippled throughout Gensokyo. There, two children from influential families got married and their lives cleaved together so closely that their impacts were barely distinguishable. Threads branched and merged chaotically, weaving over each other and twining together. The only consistent thing was that they all flowed in a single direction. And honestly, it felt like a matter of time before youkai shenanigans found a way to change even that.

She scanned over it, like running her fingers across it to check for loose threads. There were way, way too many of them. It barely took her seconds to find a snarl. A single thread had been snipped loose years ago. It only grew more and more frayed as it progressed forward from its mysterious beginning, splitting apart into thin little threads that tangled around each other. Finally, at a spot a mere hour or so ago, it ended, ripping itself apart into hundreds, if not thousands, of filaments.

She was tempted to cut it out to minimize the damage, but she knew that the benefits would be limited, too. Some things couldn't be fixed by editing history alone. Besides, while the tangles were ripping apart under tension now and then, there were still dozens of them. She'd be at it for a while if she tried attacking them all, and time was at a premium right now.

So. Moving on.

Akyuu found a single thread leading in the direction she wanted, and traced it back to its roots. It passed through a few splits and merges, but she followed it with practiced ease. These smaller threads, the narratives of normal people living their normal lives, would taper off and vanish sooner or later. They might live on in the descendants they'd left behind, but within a century or so, their names would only live on in weathered family registries. Eventually, even those would crumble.

The history that she’d just tracked down wasn’t like those. This one would last for centuries, if not millennia. Hundreds, if not thousands, of threads wrapped around a single source, branching off in every direction. This was the history of a name that would be recorded in every meaningful account of the era: Yukari Hakurei.

It was thoroughly anchored, too. She eyed it from a few angles and considered its construction. It would be hard to budge such a thoroughly rooted narrative, but that was what she needed to do. Here, though, was a thread that looked a bit more load-bearing than some others. She plucked it and let it resonate in her mind. Ah. It was the name of Yukari's mother. Akyuu couldn't say why this was so important to the popular account of her life, but...

 _Snip._ No time to overthink it. She sliced the thread. Her job later would be easier if nobody remembered that.

The bundle of threads that was Yukari's history sagged ever-so-slightly, and Akyuu sighed. If she had more time, she'd be able to take a lot more care with all of this. It almost felt heretical to be destroying history so wantonly, but...

Something tugged at her attention. Akyuu opened her eyes and groggily rubbed at the side of her head. “Is it almost time to start...?”

“I don't know,” Mokou said, without looking up from her writing. “You're the star of this show, you tell me.”

The room they were in was a big one. Mokou's private study, with a desk, an entire wall covered in shelves of scrolls and writing supplies, enough cushions to get comfy on if she needed to nap, and enough empty space to fit a dozen servants or interview subjects. A part of Akyuu jealously noted that it was almost as large as her entire private quarters atop the school. But, she set that aside for now.

Akyuu rose to standing. She knew which door she was looking for, of course. It opened into the mansion's central garden. More importantly, beyond the wall, she could just barely see the horizon. The sun was disappearing past it, barely visible as a sliver of light.

And in the sky, the moon was ready and waiting, so close to being full that it was almost indistinguishable.

Akyuu gingerly touched her head. The delicate tip of a horn pricked her finger, barely a millimeter above her scalp. Her horns were already growing in. Come to think of it, she could feel the beginnings of a tail in her skirt, too.

“It's almost time.”

“That’s what I figured." Mokou sighed. "Think you're ready for this?”

“I don’t think the moon is inclined to wait up for me either way.”

“I get it. How long are we talking?”

“Call it...” Akyuu resisted the urge to poke her horns again to gauge when they'd reach their full length. “Ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Mmh. Might as well start getting ready.”

“Can I move this desk over to the door?”

“What, does seeing the moon help?”

“It doesn't hurt.”

“Do whatever you want.” Mokou pushed herself up to standing. “I'm going to have a talk with our mercenaries.”

* * *

Alice yawned, and tried to decide whether she should curse her luck or not.

On one hand, the payment that Mokou had given her was generous. _Very_ generous. Even considering that part of it was tacitly hush money, it was about three times what she'd normally charge to chase a ghost out of somebody's basement or something. She did need the money, too. Magical experiments didn't pay for themselves, and neither did books, explosive potions, rare crystals, or any other tools of her trade.

On the other hand... something was definitely going on here. The amount of money that Mokou had been willing to throw at her for simple guard duty was suspicious to begin with. The fact that it was _Mokou_ , who didn't exactly need to be afraid of getting assassinated or something, only made it stranger. The whole thing smacked of an incident.

That, by itself, wasn't too bad. Incidents were exciting. Interesting! And they tended to be really good opportunities to try out new spells and battle strategies. This, though? Now that they'd been ushered out of the room where Mokou and Akyuu were working, there wasn't even much to _do_. The foyer of the Hieda manor wasn't a bad environment, but it still lost its charm when you realized that you were going to be standing there all night.

Leaning next to her, Rin had her head down, frowning in thought. Alice shot her a sympathetic smile. “It's a lot to think about, isn't it?”

“Eh? What is?”

“This whole situation. All the secrecy, that is. You seemed pretty deep in thought, that's all.”

“Hmm? Oh, I mean. I wasn't thinkin' about none of that. What I was thinkin' was... the young mistress's birthday's coming up, and I still haven't decided what to get her.”

“... ah.”

“I'm _considerin'_ , like... you know them giant cakes? The really big ones, that people can jump out of? I thought maybe I'd get her a new pet and put it in there, then have it pop out when she goes to eat.”

Alice had learned by now that it wasn't productive to try critiquing Rin's choice of conversation topic. She just had to roll with it. “What kind of pet?”

"Somethin' cute, like a Mongolian death worm. She's been jealous that her big sis's menagerie is way bigger ever since her gremlins had another litter. Something fun like that would cheer her up, I bet.”

“That's cute, is it?”

“Yep! Can dissolve a man's face at thirty paces, I hear. If that ain't charmin', I dunno what is.”

Behind them, the door into the house opened. Mokou shuffled out, with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her robe. She shot them each a glance that suggested they should know what she was here for, and actually speaking was an annoying, perfunctory gesture. “It's almost time to get started.”

“I see,” Alice said. “Is there anything Rin and I could do to help?”

“No. You're already doing it.”

Silence.

“Welp. Nice update,” Rin said. “We'll just keep doin' the same thing we were gonna do in the first place, then.”

Mokou gave her a weary look. “The reason I'm out here is...” she turned back to Alice. “I just need to make a few things clear.”

Alice nodded. Back to business mode. “I'm listening.”

“The work we're doing tonight is...” Mokou waved a hand vaguely in the air as she fished for the right word. “... I don't know. 'Sensitive,' I guess. Nobody can know about it until we’ve finished.”

“So I gathered from our earlier discussion.”

“Don't think you understand, though. _Nobody._ I’ve sent most of the servants home. All of the doors are locked except this one you’re watching. The servants watching the gate are turning everyone away, and they’ve got weapons tonight. If anybody gets past them...”

“We deal with 'em, yep,” Rin said. “That’s what a guard’s supposed to do anyway, right?”

“Anybody. We don't know who might try to interfere, so... gonna need you to show them the door. Whatever it takes.”

“Oh! Ya mean, like...” There was a knife in Rin's hand, suddenly. She gave it a few thrusts into the air. “... like that?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“This is soundin' more fun already.”

“So just to be clear...” Alice wasn't sure if she actually wanted to be clear on this point, but here she was, asking anyway. “... no exceptions? None at all?”

“If you see your own mom walk in that door and she won't leave... you get the idea.”

“I see. Are you going to tell us why this is worth going that far?”

“Because I gave you a pile of money for it.” With a grunt, Mokou turned back toward the interior of the manor, shooting them a parting wave as she left. “Keep an eye out. I'll see you in a few hours, if it all goes well.”

“And if it doesn't?”

Mokou closed the door behind her without answering.

* * *

Yukari floated from window to window, peering into the dark room beyond. Part of her really hoped that she was going to find something to explain all of this. What she found, though, was simply what she'd expected: Akyuu's personal quarters, atop the school. Bookshelves lined the walls, a neatly-organized desk sat next to the windows, and in the distance, she could just make out the corner of a futon. There wasn’t a trace of light to be seen. Or life, for that matter.

“No good.” She hovered back and crossed her arms, scowling at the building with disappointment. “She isn’t here.”

“It’s the night of the full moon,” Komachi said. “Shouldn’t she be out, er… doing whatever it is she does?”

“Perhaps. But from the look of things, I don’t think that anybody’s been home all day.”

“That still doesn’t mean she’s up to something.”

Yukari really wanted to agree and leave it at that. But something was definitely amiss. As unlikely as it was, if the ones acting really suspiciously were the local schoolteacher and the head of one of the most influential families around…

“One last stop,” she said. “The Hieda manor. We should get some answers there either way.”

“Sure thing.”

It wasn't a long trip. The school and the Hieda manor were only separated by a walk of a few minutes. Flying, it was a matter of seconds. She slowed down once it came into view, though. Rather than making a direct approach, she circled at a distance, hopefully invisible against the night sky. The manor looked pretty dark. That by itself wasn't all that meaningful. She really didn't know how active it would normally be after nightfall. But, she did catch silhouettes standing by the front gate, and she was almost certain that Mokou didn't post guards on ordinary nights.

Regardless of what was going on, approaching this head-on seemed like the best strategy. With a gesture to signal Komachi to follow her, Yukari floated down and landed in front of the gate.

The guards jerked back in surprise. Clearly, they were not used to having strange girls fall out of the sky barely a meter away.

"Good evening, gentlemen." Yukari curtsied.

And, eyed them up as they floundered for a response. They were both past their prime, armed with nothing except fairly plain-looking swords. Other than that, they looked completely unprepared for this. Their faces were vaguely familiar. Yukari had a feeling that they were normal household servants, enlisted into the role on short notice.

Komachi came to a quiet landing next to her, and the guards only got more flustered. It seemed like waiting was going to get her nowhere.

“I'd like to request an audience with the head of the household,” Yukari added, promptingly.

This, at least, seemed familiar enough for one of the guards to respond to. "I'm afraid that Lady Hieda isn't accepting visitors at the moment. Please come back tomorrow morning." He dipped a stiff, apologetic bow.

“Oh, but it’s such a long trip back to the shrine. It would be a shame to have to make it all over again in the morning. I’m sure that you could at least ask her if she has time for a few quick questions.”

“We…” The other guard spoke up, and soon looked like he regretted doing so. He didn't back down, though. “We’ve been told to not make any exceptions tonight. I’m sorry. If you would like to leave a message, I’ll deliver it as soon as she’s free.”

“Hmm. That’s very unfortunate to hear. I'm the Hakurei shrine maiden, and I'm here on business. Do you want to stand in the way of youkai exterminations? Are you comfortable with the thought of little children being gobbled up in their beds?”

“N-no, no, er! But… the lady’s orders were very clear. No visitors, for any reason.”

“And if I were to simply fly over the wall?”

The guard shifted in place, looking increasingly uncomfortable. One hand rested on his sword, but it didn't seem to give him much reassurance. “We’ve been asked to raise an alarm if we see any intruders.”

Yukari followed his gaze. A hefty handbell was hanging on a hook inside the gate, just out of arm's reach. Judging by his expression, he was already debating whether or not to go for it.

Komachi sighed and stretched, tilting her head back toward the darkening sky. She really put her heart and soul into it, rising up on her tiptoes a few times and arching her back until she nearly fell over. A few pops came from her joints. When she straightened back up, she rolled her neck a few times, loosening her shoulders.

The guards watched this little ritual uncertainly. They almost didn't notice that when she finally relaxed again, her hands drifted down to the hilt of her sword. By then, it was too late. The attack was visible only as a silver blur. In its aftermath, both guards' belts were sliced cleanly down the middle. Their swords fell to the ground with a clatter.

With no belts to hold them together, the fronts of the guards' robes drifted open.

“Huh, darn,” Komachi said, casually resheathing Roukanken. “Looks like your clothes are falling apart.”

Her phantom half drifted forward as she spoke, taking up a defensive position between the guards and the bell.

Komachi was _still_ putting her sword away. It was ridiculously long like that. The almost-imperceptible hum of steel rubbing against leather added a certain tension to the air. “I'll tell you what,” she said, “Why don't you two go home and change? It really wouldn't do for a noble house's guards to be standing around in their undies, right?”

The two hesitated for just a moment, torn between their duty and their innate human desires to not face down a not-quite-human swordswoman. Tonight, the latter won out. With a few bows and muttered apologies, the two men took off, holding their robes together with their hands.

Yukari pushed the swords aside with her feet, then stepped through the gate. “Do you still believe that nothing suspicious is happening?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Komachi said. “Belts fall apart all the time.”

* * *

Alice yawned. Again.

She'd already mentally composed a list of exactly what she was going to do with the payment from this job. She'd also reviewed the possible mistakes in her last failed experiment, brainstormed ideas for the location of the hidden cave that was rumored to be near Nameless Hill, and thought up a few more spell card names. She was running out of things to do in her head.

At this rate, she wouldn't need to worry about the morality of attacking anybody who walked in the door, because she'd be asleep or dead of boredom by then.

She looked over to Rin. Rin didn't seem to mind it. Currently, she was cleaning her nails with the tip of a knife.

“Are you sure that Satori isn’t expecting you back tonight?”

Rin didn’t look up. “Aww, you ain’t trying to get rid of me, are you? I like to think I’m charmin’ company!”

“It definitely isn't _that_. I'm not sure I could stand out here for five minutes without falling asleep if I were alone. I'd also rather not get you in trouble with your master, though.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it! Here, check this out.” Rin straightened up and stretched, giving a wide yawn into the air. Then, she vanished, with a small _pop_ of displaced air.

Alice was left alone. The night seemed much more silent without Rin here. She could hear quiet conversation out by the gate, and beyond that, the occasional barking dog. It wasn’t even quite into the summer yet, and there was already a lone cicada buzzing somewhere.

After perhaps forty-five seconds, Rin reappeared, leaning against the wall and inspecting her nails as if she’d never left. “See that?” she said. “Just jogged up to the manor, set the table for Lady Satori’s evening tea, and folded the young mistress's napkins into little animals like she likes. Nothin' to it.”

“Must be convenient.”

“Uh-huh.” Rin ran her thumb over a fingernail, judging how smooth it was, then filed off the very tip with dainty swipes from her knife. She blew the resulting dust off. “Oh yeah!” she added. “And Yukari and Komachi are outside. I think they just beat up the guards or somethin'?”

Rin made the remark so casually that Alice almost nodded along and let it slip past her. She glanced toward the door. “As in… outside the gate?”

“Yep!” Rin flicked her wrist. When it came to a stop, she had a knife grasped between each finger. “Guess we’re gonna have our work cut out for us, huh?”

This raised a lot of questions. Yukari and Komachi? Whatever villain Mokou was expecting, the Hakurei shrine maiden didn't exactly fit the profile. … well, okay. Yukari could be a bit of a jerk sometimes. But she was a jerk in generally the right direction.

Mokou's orders had been clear, though.

“So it seems.”

Alice realized her hand was already resting on the reassuring shape of the mini-hakkero, and she jerked away from it. She didn't need to jump straight to fighting. Not that she wasn't itching to test a few spell cards tonight, if it came to that. She was almost certain that she'd managed to hone one until not even Yukari could slip through.

Feeling half-naked without a weapon in her hand, Alice pushed the door open and stepped outside. Rin followed.

Yukari and Komachi were already in the courtyard, only a few meters from the front of a manor. They came to a stop. The four stared each other down, silently.

Yukari was the first to speak. “How surprising to see you here, Alice.”

“I could say the same thing.”

“We were told told that Mokou wasn't accepting visitors tonight, but obviously that was wrong. Do you mind if we step inside?”

“I'm afraid I can't let you in there.”

“Then maybe you could ask Mokou to come out here? I just have a few quick questions for her.”

“I can't do that either.”

Yukari gave a tight-lipped 'I'd really like to strangle you right now, but we're committed to being polite at this point' sort of smile. “Miss Kamishirasawa, then?”

“Y’know, it’s the weirdest thing?” Rin said. She was still running a knife over her nails. “That one's predisposed too.”

“Come on, we had to go out of our way to come here and everything,” Komachi said. “I'd really hate to leave empty-handed.”

“Welp. I hate to be the bearer of bad news n' all, but looks like that's what's happenin'.”

“It's a real pity.” Casually, like she knew that nobody was going to try stopping her, Yukari tossed the yin-yang orb into the air. It pulled itself through a sharp turn, then settled into a smooth orbit around her waist. With her other hand, she gave her gohei a flick. “Unless you two can offer me a very good explanation for what's going on here, I'm afraid that I just can't take no for an answer.”

Alice weighed the situation in her head. On one hand, her duel record against Yukari wasn't great... and that was on a mere win/loss level, ignoring the time that she'd crashed her broom mid-fight and broken a leg. There was the matter of Mokou's payment, though... “Well, that's too bad. Now, be a good girl and run along home, please.”

Komachi sighed. She reached back and drew her sword, with about the same level of drama and fanfare as most people might give to pulling out their coinpurse. "I was really hoping I wouldn't have to get all sweaty tonight..."

“Yep, it’s a real shame,” Rin said, without looking up from her nails. “Always did like you two. Gonna feel bad for a while after I stab ya to death.”

“Mmh.” Yukari didn’t sound amused. “Komachi, could you see to the maid? I'd like to teach Alice a lesson personally.”

“I guess.” Komachi stepped forward and spun Roukanken in a lazy circle, like she was reminding herself of its weight.

The four went quiet again, staring at each other in tense silence. Rin reluctantly finished with her nails and flicked the knife up into the air, catching it by its tip. Yukari fanned out a stack of ofuda, running her fingers along their edges. Alice grabbed her broom and slung it back over a shoulder.

Komachi pushed her head to the side, cracking her neck. Then, she turned and took off sprinting.

Rin sprang after her.

Yukari lunged forward, slashing her gohei toward Alice's head.

Alice leapt aside, barely dodging the attack, and gave Yukari a solid smack with her broom as she whipped it down from her shoulder. Without daring to look back to gauge the attack's effects, she leapt onto it and rocketed into the air.

The fight had begun.


	4. Chapter 3

Komachi had fought Rin before. So, she didn’t waste a second. The moment that everything went to chaos, she took off sprinting. That still wasn’t enough to stop Rin from getting ahead of her. There she was, standing off to the side, her arms crossed and watching curiously as two fistfuls of daggers sliced through the air toward Komachi.

Komachi had about half a second to react to all of this. She skidded to a halt, and could feel the breeze off of the daggers flashing by in front of her. They’d barely even touched down on the ground before they all vanished. Rin appeared a few meters away, with the daggers already back in her hands and a look of approval on her face. 

“Not bad, sis! Be a real shame if this was too quick or whatever.”

Rin disappeared. From a new direction, she continued, “Of course…”

Komachi had started looking for the attack as soon as Rin disappeared. But, that was the thing about fighting somebody who could stop time: by the time you realized that an attack was coming, it was already well on the way. She whirled toward the sound of Rin's voice, and spotted the glint of steel just in time to brace herself. Whipping Roukanken up, she swung it in a broad defensive arc. A dozen daggers hammered against the blade, filling the air with sparks and the angry sounds of metal-on-metal violence. A dozen more flew harmlessly past.

A single dagger pierced right through Komachi's skirt and stabbed into the ground between her legs.

“... I can make it as quick or slow as I like, yannow.”

The daggers vanished. Rin reappeared in front of her, idly inspecting one of them.

Komachi knew overconfidence when she saw it. Yukari gave her great examples on a daily basis, after all.

“Eh, you’re right. I guess you win.” Komachi whirled her sword around and slipped it back into the sheath. “I don't get paid enough to deal with this kind of thing.”

“What, givin' up already?”

“Fighting you is more trouble than it’s worth, yeah. I’ll let Yukari handle this one.”

“Aww. It was just getting fun, too.”

Komachi shot her an apologetic shrug and turned back toward the gates. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the people you end up stabbing don’t really think it’s all that fun,” she said, with a halfhearted wave back over her shoulder. She started toward the gates at a casual pace. “See you later, though? We’ll all have to get together and drink after something like this.”

“Eh, well now, that all depends on—”

And, as Komachi’s foot came down for another step, her movements suddenly became much more deliberate. She pushed off the ground and sprang backward. In the air, she twisted around, drawing Roukanken from its sheathe and swinging it in a single motion. It blurred through the air, a glinting arc of light that scythed right toward Rin’s stomach.

The attack was fast. It wasn't fast enough to land. Rin took a single stumbling step backward and vanished a split second before impact. She reappeared a couple meters to the side, safely out of the sword's arc. She was just in time for Komachi's phantom half, glowing with energy and rocketing through the air, to slam into her. It hit with the force of an oni's punch, discharging with a flash and a roar like a stroke of lightning. Rin went tumbling across the ground like a stray umbrella in a typhoon. Somewhere in there, she stopped time again, flickering back up to standing. She was still worse for the wear. Her apron was smeared with dirt, one arm was scraped, and her maid headdress was crooked.

Komachi shot her a grin and a broad shrug. “I got lucky. If you'd dodged the other way, the feint wouldn't have done much.”

“Heh. That wasn't half bad!” Rin adjusted her headdress back into place. “I was afraid this was gonna be boring. So you wanna fight for realsies, yeah?"

“I mean, I’d really rather not. How about you just lay down and let me past?”

“Nah. Don't get me wrong, nothin' against ya. But I wouldn't wanna look bad in front of my girlfriend.”

“… you mean Alice?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, I didn't know you two were together.”

“Uh-huh! For a couple weeks now.”

“Nice. I always thought you'd make a cute pair.”

“Yeah? Ain't never thought about it much 'til recently, myself, but she can be pretty cute when she's—”

In the span of about two syllables, Komachi closed most of the distance between them. A little dishonorable? Perhaps. Giving fair warning didn’t really end well in these situations. Komachi had fought Rin before, after all. She could stop time. In the blink of an eye, she could move as far as she wanted, throw out however many daggers she had on her, and take all the time she needed to recover from a good hit. The key to defeating her, it turned out, was keeping her too unbalanced and overwhelmed _to_ stop time.

“Hah!” Rin sprang back, with mere centimeters between her and the blade. “O-out for blood now, ain't ya?!”

Komachi didn't answer. Her lips were pursed with serious intent, and her eyes didn't leave her target for a moment. How long had it been since she'd actually cared about a fight? She could usually take it easy during incidents. Make a few jokes, socialize a bit with whatever newcomer had popped up to make trouble. Let Yukari worry about whether youkai shenanigans would upset the social order or whatever. Komachi just needed to keep herself from getting too rusty and get Lady Eiki off her back.

Usually, at least. Tonight felt like it might be important. Tonight, the prodigal scion of the Konpaku clan was going to have to apply herself.

“If you die...!” A swipe of her sword was barely deflected by one of Rin's daggers. The dagger flew from Rin's hand, and nearly took a thumb with it. “... I'll be sure...!” Another slash. Rin darted aside at the last moment. “... that you get...!” She quickly spun around and pivoted the sword in her hands, slashing from the other side to prevent Rin from fleeing. “... a nice resting spot!”

“Real kind of ya, but...!” Rin ducked beneath another swipe, and nearly lost some hair in the process. “... think I'll pass!”

A lunge from Komachi's phantom half followed right behind the attack, forcing Rin to stay on the defensive. Slash after slash drove her backward, keeping her off-balance and overwhelmed. Roukanken was not an elegant or subtle weapon, but it gave Komachi a reach that rivaled most spears. As Komachi sustained the assault, she poured spiritual energy into the blade, leaving it gleaming in the twilight.

Rin managed to dart free of the onslaught just as Komachi spun the sword around and stabbed it into the earth.

Where the tip pierced the ground, a geyser of pale white light erupted toward the heavens. The jet lost momentum around the level of the rooftops, where it split apart into hundreds of individual ribbons of ghostly energy. As each one reached its apex and started descending, it drifted through a broad turn, righting its course. Soon, those hundreds of tendrils of phantom light were twisting through the air, each one seeking for Rin's heart.

* * *

Alice rocketed through the air, riding sidesaddle on her broom.

She caught the familiar red of ofuda out of the corner of her vision. Shoving the tip of the broom down, she dropped a few meters of altitude, just in time to see a wave of them flash by overhead.

“Oh, running away is a great strategy,” Yukari shouted, somewhere behind her. “I'd appreciate it if you just kept going until you were out of the village.”

Alice didn't bother to respond. She ran her free hand down the bandolier of potions over her shoulder, fumbling blindly. Her fingers walked from vial to vial by muscle memory. The lowest two were explosive, and the next two up were more of an overwhelming flash effect...

She was just distracted enough that she only noticed the barrier shimmering in front of her at the last moment. A wall of warding force hung in the air, anchored by an ofuda at each corner of the five-pointed star within, and very, very solid. Yukari's attack had been a feint. Cover for her to set up the obstacle.

But, realizing where the attack had come from and dodging it were two very different things. Alice grit her teeth and braced for impact, skidding through a hairpin turn in the air. Or trying to, at least. She didn't quite manage. She smacked into the barrier right at the end of the curve, rebounding with a dull thud. Still a much softer impact than if she'd flow into it head-on.

She was rattled, but intact. No time to linger on it. As she rocketed off in a new direction, she slipped a vial from her belt, yanked the cork out with her teeth, and chucked it back toward Yukari.

A muffled _foomf_ , like a hundred kilograms of feathers falling to the ground, announced that it had worked. As soon as the potion touched the air, it exploded into a cloud of acrid gas, covering twice as much area as a measly barrier. It made for a handy smokescreen. More usefully, Yukari sputtered in shock as she plowed right into it. Soon, she was gagging and wheezing. By the time she burst out from the near side, it was all she could do to hunch over and gulp down untainted air. “Y-you would have done well…”

An irritated gesture from Yukari was all it took to make the yin-yang orb burst apart into six smaller copies. They settled into a rapidly-spinning circle, hovering behind her in a halo. “... to leave before I lost my patience.”

Alice suspected that she knew what was coming. This was no consolation when every single orb erupted into a machine gun stream of homing ofuda. Their long arc took them outward before they curved back to encircle her, like six giant fingers closing into a fist. The walls of ofuda blurred past, too fast to dart between. Everything beyond them was tinged in red. She was effectively sealed within the arena.

An arena that was rapidly contracting in to squeeze her, as a hailstorm of red bullets erupted from Yukari's outstretched hand.

Alice backpedaled in the air, reeling away from the more immediate attack, but she could only buy so herself so much maneuvering space. The wall of ofuda was still squeezing in around her, implacable. The bullets streaked right toward her. She was trapped between hammer and anvil.

The mini-hakkero was already in her hand as she started weaving through the first wave of the attack. Her fingers crawled across its back, tweaking delicate knobs and switches to dial in the settings she needed. It had barely been a month since the last time she'd sat down with Kosuzu to tinker with it, and while she'd drilled herself on the new configuration relentlessly, doing things mid-combat wasn't quite the same. She was just going to have to hope for the best. _Focal distance to maximum, power at about 80%, fuel burn rate to maximum, aperture size 2..._

She didn't hesitate once the final setting was in. Whipping the hakkero up, she fired to the side.

Most ofuda, she'd learned the hard way, were pretty durable. They had enough spiritual power to bind gods, if need be. They needed to survive flying across battlefields that were occasionally filled with fireballs, miniature suns, and barrages of daggers so densely-packed that the gnats were lucky to make it out alive. Fire would wash over them. Projectiles might take down any they hit, but it was ultimately a futile defense.

What came from the hakkero was none of these. A white-hot beam of energy, barely as thick as one of her fingers, lanced out. Its full power was focused onto a point smaller than a coin. She didn't even see where it impacted before it had already turned every card it touched into drifting clouds of ash.

She didn’t have time to be artful about it. She lashed the hakkero around, slicing the beam through the ofuda in every direction. Soon, the great chains of ofuda were severed, leaving the far ends fluttering indecisively in the air and the ones closer to Yukari dragging along through the air. Yukari loosed them, leaving them drifting toward the ground below, and recoiled to launch another wall of ofuda. As she raised her hand to fire the attack, Alice lunged forward, diving right past her.

It was a slightly reckless move. She could feel the fresh attack slicing by so close that it nearly clipped her. She’d gotten past it, though, darting out into the open air and safety. Above her, Yukari was already dispelling the attack. With a wave of her hand she unleashed the ofuda, leaving them drifting toward the ground in a disorderly cloud.

“Do you have a name for that one?” Alice shouted up, pulling around to a stop in the air. She was already digging in a pouch on her belt.

“I'll admit, I'm torn,” Yukari shouted back. “I'd been considering _All-encompassing Danmaku Boundary_ , but now I'm considering _Noose for a Stubborn Witch._ ”

“Very poetic.” From within the pouch, Alice fished out a fistful of crystals and tossed them into the air. They already knew what was expected of them. Hovering outward, they arranged themselves into a broad vaguely diamond-ish shape.

“This is still a work in progress, but I'm thinking of calling it _Prism Sign "Three-Stage Rainbow Volley"_. I'd appreciate your feedback later.”

A single beam of blinding white light was all it took to start the attack. Where it pierced into the first crystal, it split into seven discrete beams, one of each color. Each beam intersected another crystal, where they were redirected and split again. At the far end of the array, fourteen beams, of colors all across the spectrum, were focused down into three crystals. The whole arrangement formed a web of rainbow light, bright enough to illuminate the courtyard below.

And at the far end, closest to Yukari, the three final crystals unleashed an entire arsenal. A laser erupted from each, rapidly cycling through portions of the spectrum as they swept in toward Yukari. Cascading waves of bullets burst out just behind them, filling the sky like a thousand colorful stars.

Yukari sucked in one last ragged breath just in time to react. She leapt forward, weaving between bullets, and barely avoided getting singed by the nearest laser.

* * *

Hatate had made the right choice by going with the dinner special.

She speared another section of fried bamboo with the tip of a chopstick and popped it into her mouth. A few loud crunches announced that she was enjoying the dish with enthusiasm.

The bamboo shoot tempura bowl _was_ one of the pub's specialties. More importantly, though: the place had outdoor seating, and its patio had a good view of the spot where Aya had dragged her for proselytizing earlier. The spot where she was supposed to be meeting back up with Yukari and Komachi. The spot where she was supposed to have already _met_ up with Yukari and Komachi, a few minutes ago.

This was one of the unfortunate parts of life in a weird fantasy world. Nobody else owned a watch. 'Around sunset' was a pretty vague definition, too. If they had internet access here, Hatate could've told them exactly when sunset was, eliminating all that annoying ambiguity. But no, here she was, wasting her time waiting for a meetup that was scheduled for a big, hazy window, sitting across from a table of drunk carpenters who were getting louder by the second.

And she'd already burnt the last of her DS battery, so that was no longer an option. Things were getting pretty dire.

The worst part was, she couldn't even be sure they were going to show up. Neither Yukari no Komachi were the most reliable people around at the best of times, and her own investigation had proven pretty fruitless. An hour and a half of questioning people, and the closest thing she'd gotten to a lead was 'I couldn't remember which house I lived in the other night, but to be honest I was _really_ drunk.' If they'd gotten similar results, they'd probably just written the entire thing off as a waste of time and gone home.

She wasn't leaving empty-handed tonight if she could help it, though. That whole debacle with the pottery earlier had to mean that something was up. … also, there was still a modest pile of it sitting over there. If it turned out that something was actually going on, it would be a good excuse to get out of helping Aya pick up broken vases tomorrow.

Just as she'd gotten desperate enough to debate asking the carpenters if they'd seen Yukari, shouts of amazement rose throughout the village.

Hatate stood up, still holding her bowl and shoveling the last of the rice into her mouth.

It wasn't hard to see what had caused the disruption. Half a kilometer or so in the distance, a lattice of rainbow light hung in the sky. Now and then, a beam would flicker out of existence, or pivot toward some unseen foe. A razor-thin line of white light led back to the source. The whole configuration fizzled out, only to be replaced by a different display.

Somebody was having a spell card duel, and they were doing it right above the village.

Oh crap. So this was like... an _Incident_ incident. Capitalized and everything. That wasn't good, maybe.

Hatate had lived in Gensokyo for long enough to know how this worked. Without further debate, she shouldered her messenger bag, yanked her gohei out of it, leapt into the air, and took off toward the firefight.

* * *

Rin sprinted forward, leaning into it and keeping her head down. The newest wall of phantasmal bullets couldn't quite alter their course fast enough. She darted past them, and they were left to circle around, going through a broad, sweeping turn that would make them a nonissue for several seconds.

The things were tenacious, she'd give them that. Once you got the knack of them, though, dodging was a piece of cake. She froze time again while she had the chance, giving her all the recovery time she could ever need.

“Points for style, I guess.” Her voice sounded thoroughly muffled, with the words dying in the air the second they left her mouth. She knew from experience that when she unfroze time, they'd be little more than a puff of wind, no longer even identifiable as speech after having every syllable forced out at once.

“But this ain't all that scary once ya know how it works, y'know?”

Komachi didn't answer, because she was frozen in time with everything else. It turned out that Rin had chosen a pretty good moment for this. Komachi had taken off after her while the seeking bullets were still doing their thing. That kind of determined pursuit wasn't fun to be on the receiving end of, but Komachi hadn't kept her defenses up, either. She was crouched down, halfway through absorbing the impact of a landing. A move like that would take a second or two to recover from. Nice and vulnerable.

Rin raised two fistful of daggers and launched them with a practiced flick of her wrist. The moment they left her hands, they came to a stop, hanging frozen along with the rest of the world. A big, clumsy attack, the kind of thing that'd draw lots of attention and demand a reaction. Walking off to the side, she found a nice spot that was probably right at the periphery of Komachi's vision. Here, she was more careful about it, lining up a throw right at the center of Komachi’s mass and tossing out a few daggers one at a time, letting her aim each one individually. Craftsmanship was important in these things. She'd be a real failure of a maid if she just did this stuff all willy-nilly.

A few more daggers on the other side, one behind her, a couple in between _those_... There. That was a nice arsenal of stabbing power slicing in toward Komachi. The big group would get an immediate response from her, and if her dodge took her any direction but up, one of the other daggers would skewer her. Perfect.

She strolled off to the side to get a better look. Important to evaluate your own craftsmanship from time to time. Never knew when you'd learn something. This setup looked as good from the outside as it had from up close, though. A nice, efficient stabbing machine, with just enough wiggle room to maybe escape.

Stabbing people during frozen time wasn't much of an option. Their flesh was as unmoving as anything else, so it was like trying to cut a rock. So, yeah, between that and the whole spell card thing, she figured it was only fair to give people a fighting chance. It still wasn't fun to play _too_ fair.

Satisfied with her handiwork, she snapped her fingers. Time came unstuck.

The daggers flashed in. It took a mere instant for Komachi to realize what had happened. Charging forward, she slashed her sword upward, trailing ghostly blue light. A crescent-shaped burst of energy shot out. The shockwave of its passage knocked the daggers aside, diverting their course. Komachi arrived a split-second behind it, charging through the gap that her attack had opened. Rin’s trap closed in around nothing.

Rin tutted in disappointment, but she was pleased. This was fun. She enjoyed seeing just how far she could push somebody. Alice had always been pretty uneasy with it and accused her of toying with her prey, but whatever. You couldn't make dinner for two vampires every day if you were squeamish.

Komachi whirled around for a counterattack, and Rin braced herself to dodge or stop time.

The attack didn’t come, though. Komachi’s posture relaxed, as she straightened up to shoot a puzzled look to the side. It was all the warning that Rin got. Something glowing and white blurred into sight from that direction, and she didn't even have time to consider reacting before impact. It detonated with a _THUMP_ that was nearly solid enough to knock her over by itself. A concussive blast of energy washed over her like the backdraft from a fire, and she was barely left standing.

A light in the distance announced that another attack was coming. There, just barely visible in the fading daylight, was Hatate, standing with her glowing gohei outstretched.

Rin took all of this in just as the second attack fired off. Hatate gave her gohei a casual, almost taunting swipe. A miniature wolf leapt forth, formed of pure energy.

This time, she was prepared. Rin sprang backward, dodging the attack by a mere meter or so. It smashed into the ground and erupted with enough force to flatten the grass and leave her ears ringing. A quick burst of flight ensured that she got well away from the point of impact, and she came to a landing on the roof.

Hatate didn't fire another attack. For a moment, all was quiet except for the strange, distant sound of Yukari and Alice's mid-air laser battle.

“Two versus one, huh?” Rin shouted down at them. “An' here I thought we was gonna have a proper duel!”

“It's more convenient for all of us if you lose faster, though.” Komachi glanced over to Hatate. “Oh, hey, sorry we forgot to meet back up with ya, though. We got sidetracked.”

“That's kinda obvious, yeah.” Hatate scowled up at Rin. “I totally have no idea what this is all about, but if you surrender and stuff, I'll go easy on you. I left, like, an entire mug of beer back at the pub though, so it'd be cool if you could refund—“

Rin didn't really care to hear the rest. She gave her hand an annoyed flick. Time stopped.

One-on-one fights were fun. She could hammer away at her opponent's defenses, slowly pushing them further and further until she found the exact right attack to defeat them. Like solving a puzzle, except all you got was the satisfaction of a job well done and, okay, usually a grudge from the sore loser who'd gotten stabbed. Big babies.

Two-on-one fights were not so fun. Even stopping time left her walking a delicate balance, with only a thin margin between defeat and the bloody, socially unacceptable sort of victory. Which was all to say, she needed to get serious.

With a sigh, Rin hefted her skirt and mentally undid a few space-manipulating tricks she'd hidden up there. Daggers rained out from within, piling up right at the spot where they froze in time around her shins. After a bit, she had to shift her position to avoid being halfway buried in them. By the time she finally gave her skirt a few flicks to shake the last few out, there were enough daggers hovering around to make a knee-high pile.

“Alright,” she said, scooping up the first of many handfuls of daggers. “Let's get to work, I guess.”

It felt like a good half hour of work from her perspective. When she allowed time to resume, the stars were blotted out over the courtyard. Her foes only had about two seconds to react before the first wave of daggers crashed down on them.

* * *

Yukari weaved through a hail of bullets.

In the middle of Alice's ridiculous rainbow storm, it was hard to even see through the glare, let alone spot bullets before they were half a meter away from smacking into her. This sort of thing wasn't against the rules of the spell card system, but it was definitely treading the line a bit. It was thoroughly annoying... primarily because she hadn't thought of it first. That was the single benefit of being the Hakurei shrine maiden: as the arbiter of the spell card system, her own rule-bending tricks were 'innovations,' not 'cheating.'

Three or four spell cards in, and Alice didn't seem like she was going to run out anytime soon. Leave it to a tactics-obsessed spell card nerd to come overprepared. She needed to put an end to this quickly, or this was going to take all night. That was simply unacceptable. Some people needed to _sleep_ , dammit.

Sensing an opening behind her, she darted back, giving herself some breathing space. It only bought her a moment before another neon laser swept past, but she weaved around it. Slipping a small stack of ofuda from her sleeve, she squinted into the barrage of light, trying to pinpoint just where her target was. Most of the beams seemed to radiate from a single spot, so that seemed like a likely candidate. Time to end this.

Yukari whipped her hand up, throwing out a wave of ofuda. A meter in front of her, they flattened out and hung in the air, like they'd slapped into an invisible wall. A shimmering field of energy rippled between them. Not the strongest barrier she could make, but... this was a fight, not a demon-sealing. It only needed to last a few seconds. Bracing one hand against it, Yukari shoved it out of position and charged straight forward, with the barrier outstretched in front of her like a shield.

Dozens of bullets pounded on its surface like a hail of gravel. Lasers washed across it, leaving it sizzling in their wake. The assault weakened the barrier and sent a few ofuda floating languidly toward the ground, but she paid them no mind. If she kept going, the barrier might break. If she stopped here and let Alice bombard it at her leisure, the barrier would _definitely_ break. She grit her teeth, only willing herself to move faster. She made good speed as she passed into the gap between waves of bullets, moving unimpeded for a few seconds. The next one crashed over her, more forceful this close to their origin. Through a gap in the assault, she spotted Alice, mere meters away and suddenly looking very, very surprised.

The barrier slammed into Alice.

Yukari followed through with a thrust of her hand, shattering the barrier and launching the frozen ofuda out like a shotgun blast.

With her other hand, she whipped her gohei up and smacked the magician right in the stomach.

It was an attack that Alice clearly hadn't been prepared for. It nearly knocked her off her broom. As it was, she was too stunned to maintain her flight for a moment. Tumbling end over end, she plummeted toward the ground and only managed to brake her fall a few meters short of splattering against it. “Do you _really_ call that a spell card attack?” Alice shouted up at her, as the broom pulled up and started regaining her lost altitude.

“I'll call it whatever I like,” Yukari shouted back. “If you'd like to surrender, I might go easy on you.”

“Not hardly. I have three more new attacks I haven't even tried yet.”

Right. If she didn't end this now, they'd be here all night. And who knew what Mokou was doing inside.

Yukari extended a hand and mentally beckoned the yin-yang orbs. They flew back into her grip, slipping through each other and merging back into a single larger orb. She chucked it into the air and thrust the tip of her gohei up against it. There, the orb hovered improbably, and began to glow.

What little she'd been able to find on the previous Hakurei shrine maidens suggested that the shrine's blessings tended to manifest in idiosyncratic ways. One shrine maiden might become as tough as an oni, while another might develop superhuman reflexes and the precision to spear a mosquito with a throwing needle in a rainstorm. One had apparently been able to transcend reality to become invincible for minutes at a time.

Yukari's specialty was nothing quite so fancy. She was good at seals and barrier manipulation, sure, but that was rarely enough to win fights.

Yukari had raw, brute spiritual force on her side.

The air around the yin-yang orb shivered. Every discarded or fallen ofuda in the area started drifting upward, drawn toward it. When they came near they spiraled in around it, like water circling a drain, before slapping against its surface. It took a moment for the first few ofuda to reach it, but soon a torrent of them were drifting in. Within a matter of seconds, the orb was buried under centimeters of paper. The whole construct was twice as large as it had started out, and still growing. 

Growing more and more quickly, even, as the biggest wave of ofuda reached it. Yukari’s sleeves jostled, as the ofuda she’d stashed away for later use floated out to join the flow. The glow from the orb was bright enough to light the courtyard below, a second full moon. It had a _sound_ now, like a muffled bonfire. It grew bigger.

Below her, Alice was watching with something between amazement and anxiety. Yukari shot her a confident smile as she moved the tip of the gohei in a lazy circle, starting the orb spinning. “I thought that it would only be fair to show off another of my own, after all. I think I'll call it…”

The orb was roiling with white energy now. The spin grew faster, even as the last few ofuda slapped against it. It had to weigh two or three kilograms, but she moved with practice ease as she swung the gohei down, dragging the orb along with it. As soon as it was pointed at Alice, she released it. It blasted forward, with a recoil that nearly left her spinning in the air. “ _Fantasy Sign “Massively Overcharged Divine Airburst”_.”

She really doubted that Alice even heard her. Hard to say, since she couldn't even see Alice past the projectile. Energy streamed behind it like a meteor. For a moment, everything in sight was divided into white light and stark, deep shadows. She caught a brief glimpse of Alice, darting out past the side as she frantically tried to avoid being crushed.

It would have worked if not for the 'airburst' part.

The entire construct exploded. The concussion echoed across the countryside like thunder. The shockwave blasted out hundreds, or maybe thousands, of ofuda. A solid wall of them erupted in every direction. They plastered a section of the nearby rooftop in red-white paper, and speckled the ground below. Yukari herself had to dodge to avoid a few of them.

Alice, at ground zero, had no such luck. Practically cocooned in ofuda on the side that was closest to the blast, she fell from the sky, wriggling and letting out a muffled shout of protest. Her broom tumbled away as she fell through the air. Somewhere in there, she oriented herself well enough to brake her fall. A sharp burst of flight stopped her from hitting the ground at those speeds, but she still rolled for a few meters before she came to a stop, squirming against her restraints.

Yukari allowed herself to take her time as she floated down to join Alice on the ground. On the far end of the courtyard, she could see Komachi, Rin, and Hatate all going at it. Hard to tell who was winning from this distance, but she knew who usually won when somebody was outnumbered two-to-one.

Yukari came down lightly, landing right next to where the now ofuda-free yin-yang orb hand landed. She scooped it up in one hand, then made her way over to Alice. The poor thing was still restrained. A few particularly lucky hits had bound her feet together, even. Only one arm remained mostly free. Yukari at least did her the favor of peeling a few back to expose her mouth.

“Now, I'm afraid that used up the last of my ofuda. If you'd like to continue, I'll need to switch to throwing needles.”

Alice's only response was defeated silence. Before Yukari could continue, yet another muffled _pop_ , followed by a few shouts, suggested that Rin had just suffered some ill fortune as well.

“Oh, wonderful timing. Why don't we go inside and have a nice, _long_ talk?”

* * *

The procession that made its way into the Hieda manor was a strange one—shrine maidens from two rival shrines, a rather scuffed-up goth maid, a half-phantom swordswoman, and a human magician who was still peeling ofuda off of herself. Alice and Rin, at least, seemed reasonable in their defeat. Yukari kept a cautious eye on them, but they weren't the ones she was worried about now.

She'd been inside the Hieda manor before, but only on a few occasions. She'd seen just enough of it to get a vague idea of where they were going as Rin reluctantly gave them directions. The rooms here were larger, the decorations more plentiful, and the hallways wider. This end of the building held the quarters for the head of the Hieda family and her most trusted servants.

The room that Rin pointed them toward was one of the largest. The door slid aside to reveal an expansive study, with more reading material lining its walls than she could hope to peruse in a year. The far door was open too, revealing the garden beyond and the twilight sky. In front of it, Akyuu was seated, running her hands across a glowing scroll, with her fully-formed horns stretching toward the ceiling and a bushy tail laying across the floor behind her. Next to her, Mokou was already standing up.

Yukari preempted her. “Oh, this is a nice room. I don't know that I've ever seen this one. Did you install the were-hakutaku yourself, or does it come standard?”

Mokou raised her hands appeasingly. “Yukari, listen. You don't know what's going on—”

“But I'd like to. Oh, and Akyuu, you have five seconds before I find out if my gohei is tougher than that skull of yours.”

Akyuu opened her eyes with a sigh, moving her hands from the scroll. “I thought it would end like this.”

“Then it would have been polite of you to skip to the part where you surrender. _Now_ , I’d very much like to know what was so important that it was worth paying Alice to try killing me.”

Akyuu and Mokou exchanged a glance. Akyuu nodded. Grumbling, Mokou fished a key from her pocket, and held it up to make it clear that this wasn't some kind of attack. Against one wall was a small trunk, which the key unlocked with a heavy _clunk_ of shifting mechanisms. Mokou opened the lid, and from within, withdrew... paper. It was a stack of paper.

“Don't think you're going to like hearing this.”

“I already haven't liked anything that's happened since I left the shrine this afternoon. I think I'll manage.”

“I mean,” Rin blurted out. She didn't look the slightest bit self-conscious as every eye in the room turned toward her. “I'm kinda wonderin' what this is all about, myself.”

“Mmh. Don't say I didn't warn you.” Mokou tossed the papers onto the table. “Here. Read up on Gensokyo's actual history first. We'll talk after.”


	5. Chapter 4

"'Youkai of Boundaries,'” Yukari read aloud, “'Yukari Yakumo. Ability: Manipulation of boundaries. Threat level: Unknown.' Hmm.”

“What, s'there one for everyone? I wanna see.” Rin, too, dug into the pile.

Soon there was a free-for-all, as everybody dug through the papers to find the ones of most interest to them. Somewhere in the chaos, Alice caught a glimpse of her name. She tried to follow the paper as it was shifted around. One by one, the hands pulled away, taking whatever pages they’d been after. In a gap between them, Alice snatched up her own page.

The picture _did_ look like her. The outfit wasn't anything she'd ever owned, though, and there was a doll hovering behind her. And printed at the top...

“'Seven-Colored Puppeteer, Alice Margatroid'?” She skimmed ahead a bit. “'It is said that cooking, laundry, cleaning and other household chores are mostly done by her dolls. It seems convenient at first, but the dolls are not moving by themselves...' As nice as it would be to have dolls take care of everything, I really don’t know if I’d make a very good puppeteer.”

“If ya think that's bad, you should see mine.” Komachi turned the paper around to show off the picture, herself with a massive scythe slung back over her shoulder. “Apparently I'm a shinigami.”

“Do you know how to fight with a scythe?”

“Nope. It says I sail a boat, too, and I don’t think I've ever been on one in my life.”

It started a wave of conversation, as everybody sifted through the papers and showed off their findings to each other.

“Oh, here you go, Hatate. That goddess of yours has wings.”

“I mean, there are two of them. Which—oh, _jeez_. And those goofy shoes! I bet she'd make it about four steps.”

“That's nothing. This one has that gap fox wearing Yukari's uniform.”

“Well, then she'd better wash it before she returns it.”

“I got ya all beat.” Rin slapped her own paper down on the table. “I'm a _cat_.”

A wave of snickers rose around the table. As it cleared, Alice sat her paper down and looked back to Mokou. “You obviously put a lot of work into these, but I'm not sure what we're looking at.”

“ _I_ didn't write them. Akyuu did,” Mokou said. “This is the real Gensokyo Chronicle.”

Hatate tossed her own paper back into the pile. “Are you taking criticism and stuff? I noticed a few inaccuracies. Like something about Lady Aya being a bird.”

“All of it's true, as far as I can tell,” Mokou said.

“Uh... huh. Don't you think this is kinda... high concept for a prank?”

“Do you really think we'd do all this for a prank?” Mokou gestured to Akyuu. “She can explain it better, though.”

“Not that I came prepared to do so. If I had to put it simply...” Akyuu sighed and crossed her arms. That fluffy hakutaku tail swished anxiously back and forth. “Gensokyo has the wrong past.”

Knife in hand, Rin gave a vague gesture in the air. “What, like... the stuff that happened didn't happen?”

“Something like that. You all know my abilities, right? As a were-hakutaku, I can see Gensokyo's commonly-accepted history. As the Child of Miare, I have a perfect memory. I never forget anything. Even, it turns out, if I wake up in the morning to find that I’m suddenly a different person.”

“That happen to you a lot, does it?”

“Not hardly. The short version is that, sometime last Thursday night, Gensokyo was... rewritten. It seems like I'm the only person who remembers the correct version. Which is to say, the actual Gensokyo.”

“Huh.” Komachi glanced downward. “So you're saying these are...?”

“I'm the one who wrote them, yes. These are quick reproductions of your Gensokyo Chronicle profiles. Your real ones, that is.”

Alice looked back to her paper. _She may seem like a youkai that is difficult to deal with, but she has a weak point. That is Alice herself. She has her hands full manipulating the dolls, so her movements are sluggish and her fighting ability is low._ A youkai. Right. Kind of hard to visualize herself in those shoes. If she were 'sluggish' and bad in a fight, she wouldn't have survived this long.

“You really expect me to believe that I'm a puppet-using youkai and have just forgotten it?”

“That does seem to be what happened.”

“You're sayin' I'm a cat?” Rin sounded offended by the implications.

“Yes. A kasha, to be precise.”

“A _cat_? Really? I mean, don't get me wrong, sis, if I could bend around to lick myself like that, I ain’t too good for it, but—”

Alice rested a hand on Rin's back and gave it a firm knead, working some of the tension out of it. Rin trailed off and leaned against her with an annoyed rumble.

Hatate broke the silence by pushing herself up to standing. “ _So._ ” She stretched some of the stiffness out of her legs. “I totally wasn't expecting it to get sillier after Yukari being a youkai, but you sure showed me. You guys have fun playing make-believe and stuff, okay?”

“I believe that some nearby worlds weren't affected. If you'd like to go to Makai or the Lunar Capital, I'm sure they can give you a convincing answer. Or, here.” Akyuu singled Rin out with a claw-tipped finger. “Rin Kaenbyou. A kasha, and servant of Satori Komeiji, the elder satori sister and de facto ruler of the underworld. I'm afraid the underworld is hard for me to research, so I don't know that there were any records of you until five years ago. When, of course, you flooded the surface with vengeful spirits to draw attention to the fact that your crow friend, Utsuho Reiuji, had gone mad with power, after being manipulated by one—” the finger moved to Hatate “—Kanako Yasaka, the actual head goddess of the Moriya shrine. Hatate, you might have noticed that you don't have an article. Aya is usually the tengu ambassador to humanity. But, your paper, the _Kakashi Spirit News_ , has gotten much better over the last few years, and I've picked up a subscription to help keep myself informed about what's happening on the mountain. You seem pretty level-headed and fair compared to the other tengu reporters.”

“Thanks, I guess. You know that doesn't prove anything though, right? You could have just made a bunch of stuff up off the top of your—”

Akyuu's finger moved to Yukari. “Yukari Yakumo. I'm sure you can read the article for yourself, so I'll jump ahead to details that aren't in there. A friend of mine back to the time of my first reincarnation—and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying having you be the younger one for a change. Once ate three plates of sakura mochi during a visit before I had the servants cut her off. Occasionally brings me new records for my phonograph from the outside world, and makes it blatantly obvious that she expects me to let her edit the Chronicle to her heart's content in exchange. I suspect that's only a feint and she uses those arguments as a deniable way to slip me information about youkai that I could never gather on my own, but I don't know for sure either way. According to Reimu, one of the best ways to get her to cooperate is to threaten to break her parasol; apparently finding replacements in the outside world is hard. Should I go on?”

“I get the picture,” Yukari said. “Either you put a lot of preparation into this, or you're actually telling the truth.”

“Could just be good at improv,” Hatate muttered.

Akyuu dipped her head in a reluctant nod. “I’m sorry to say it, but these papers are the truth.”

“And that up until _last Thursday_ ,” Alice repeated, “we were all entirely different people.”

“That's correct. I know that this is a lot to take in. I spent... the better part of two days trying to find any other explanation, myself. It took me another day to convince Mokou enough to agree to help me. But I don't have any reason to lie about this. This Gensokyo, the Gensokyo that you know, isn't the original state of affairs. Until this week, Alice was a youkai magician, Yukari was a youkai sage, Rin was a—”

“Gotcha.” Rin cut Akyuu off, with the slightest biting tone of annoyance. “Pretty sure we can all read.”

Awkward silence overtook the room. The group exchanged some uneasy glances, of the 'either Akyuu is insane, or something is very wrong here' variety. A few people halfheartedly shifted the papers around and glanced over newly-uncovered ones, but nobody seemed all that focused on them at the moment.

“You have to admit that it seems convenient that nobody remembers any of this but you,” Yukari said.

“I'm... not sure why that’s the case, myself. I do have some theories, though? I'm still the Child of Miare, even though I'm, er, a different person. The Hourai immortals are still Hourai immortals. Whatever did this obviously couldn't change everything. I... suspect those sorts of things are harder to change, if not downright impossible.”

“'Obviously'?” Alice repeated after her. “It sounds to me like they were pretty thorough.”

Akyuu shook her head. “They didn't do a very good job of it, actually. The history is… flawed. There are strange gaps, and in other places, everything is being held together by improbable events. Think about it this way: Satori isn’t a satori, and Nue isn’t a nue. Gensokyo’s avatar of Bishamonten is probably the least-Buddhist person that any of us can think of. There’s a Lunarian whose specialty is making medicine, but the person who created the Hourai elixir is a satori. The goddesses of the Moriya shrine use a lot of wolf and crow symbolism, mere kilometers away from a village full of wolf and crow tengu by pure coincidence. From my perspective, it all looks kind of slapdash. Doesn’t any of this strike you as strange?”

“You can’t blame every weird thing on that,” Komachi said. “Half the stuff that happens around here barely makes sense. Remember that time the Buddhists flew a boat to Makai? I’m still not sure how that worked.”

“Yes, it isn’t the cause of everything strange. That one happened in both Gensokyos, actually. Hmm. If I had to put it into words… if Gensokyo’s history were a building, it would look fine from inside. But there are some support columns missing, and the foundation isn’t stable.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“And what about the pot from earlier?” Yukari asked. “How was that connected?”

“What pot would that be?”

“It was a pot. It was glowing blue and vibrating. Hatate should be the one explaining it. It was her mess.”

“Hey, it wasn't _my_ mess!” Hatate said. “It was Lady Aya's. I thought it was a dumb plan in the first place. Um, so. We had this flower pot, right? And it was glowing blue, and it kept changing. Like, it would break, then put itself back together, then there would be flowers growing out of it for a few seconds. Stuff like that. After a while, it started freaking out and kinda… exploded into a zillion other clay things. Pots and stuff.”

“Oh. Hmm.” Akyuu lowered her head and closed her eyes, like she was dredging something up from the very deepest depths of her memory. “About... a bit under two hours ago? In the human village, I believe?”

“I think so?”

“I actually saw that in the history, yes. Whatever it had been before… it looked like it was being pulled between conflicting fates. The universe no longer knew where it was supposed to be, or what it was supposed to be. Before long, it had split apart into dozens of possible outcomes. And eventually, the tension resolved. The thread of causality snapped. Some of those possibilities became real, even though they were mutually exclusive.”

“Huh. I mean, that could be way worse, right? Lots of free pots and stuff, I guess.”

“Not too bad with a pot, no. I'm not sure how it would go with a person, though.”

“… oh. Uh. Yeah, I don't really wanna see what that would look like.”

“We might find out. Whatever caused it, that pot isn’t the only thing affected. All of Gensokyo is drifting toward that kind of fate. The core of our history is flawed, and it will drag everything else down with it sooner or later.”

“So it’ll keep spreading?” Rin asked.

“I think so, yes.”

“And is this the kinda ‘flawed’ where it’s got some issues but still works okay, or the kinda flawed like…” Rin made a broad gesture downward, and a ‘pssssh’ noise like shattering glass.

“… it's current the former. I think we'd all like to keep it that way.”

“See, this is just my luck,” Komachi said, resting an elbow on the table. “Lady Eiki said I could have a day off next week, and now the world's going to end or something. That figures.”

“This is quite a theory,” Alice said. “And not an immensely persuasive argument.”

“I can’t offer much concrete evidence when it comes to the nature of causality,” Akyuu said, coolly. “Like I said, you're welcome to go ask in Makai or somewhere if you don't believe me. But how else are you going to explain your exploding pot?”

“She’s got a point,” Komachi said.

“There’s more to it than that, though,” Yukari said, turning her gaze toward Akyuu. “You were doing something when we arrived. None of this explains exactly what you and Mokou were up to, or why you thought it was necessary to hire Alice.”

Akyuu froze. She glanced aside, suddenly looking uneasy.

Mokou sighed. “Think about it like this: Things are messed up. We don’t know who did it and why. And, look, none of you are really accepting this with open arms. It took Akyuu five hours to convince me this was true, and that only worked because she used to _be_ me, so she knows some stuff she really shouldn’t. If we’d gone to you and asked for help, you would have chased us off, especially if you hadn’t already seen that pot for evidence. We had to take things into our own hands.”

“And just what did that mean, Mokou?”

Mokou stood her ground, her expression hardening a bit. “My idea. Tonight's the full moon, so I was gonna have Akyuu use her hakutaku powers to edit your histories. Swap some bits out for the original ones. I figured it would make you more willing to accept all of this and actually do something if you could remember some of it.”

“… huh,” Komachi said. “I guess that explains my birthday, at least...”

“You were trying to brainwash us?!” Hatate blurted out.

“Help you remember the real thing, so you’d try to fix it.”

“That still doesn’t make you sound too trustworthy, you know!”

“We're talking about something that could mean the survival or destruction of Gensokyo.” Akyuu still looked guilty, avoiding eye contact as she spoke. “It isn't something I'd do under less serious circumstances.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s super generous of you.”

“Anyway, seems to me like that'd do it,” Rin said. “Just rewrite all of history like that. Zap, that's problem solved, ain't it?”

“Rewriting all of Gensokyo's history is a bit more work than I could fit into a single full moon. Besides, I can't change the actual past. I can only change history. People's recollections of the past and the narrative they build around it. I could make people _remember_ you being a kasha, but…”

“… but I'd actually just be some human lady tryin' really hard to purr and gettin' all worked up wondering where my tail went to?”

“Two tails, actually. But yes.”

“So instead we're gonna die.”

“Did you decide that you believe me, then?”

Alice wasn't so fast to commit to it, but this argument was more persuasive than she would have liked. It was, at the very least, concerning. And if Akyuu was right about everything... “Let's say that we're willing to consider it for now.”

“If you insist on trying to find proof of what I’m saying, I think there should be time, at least. If I had to guess... we have around a month to deal with this. The smaller issues will all work themselves out in a matter of days, but the structure is under too much stress to last. Just like a collapsing house, I suppose. For a while, it will only creak and wobble, but once it decides to go…”

Rin repeated her plate-smashing noise.

“Yes. That.”

A month before Gensokyo collapsed on itself. _That_ wasn't exactly nice to think about. Alice could feel herself getting jittery already. Even if this was all a lie, she didn't suspect she was going to get much sleep until she'd found some way forward. On the other hand, it wasn't like none of the previous incidents they'd dealt with were dangerous. The whole hell raven thing could have easily gone real badly. So really, this was just business as usual, apart from Akyuu's insistence that she was supposed to be living Marisa's life and vice-versa.

Now _that_ was weird to think about. Marisa on a broom and flying off to solve incidents... Alice wasn't certain if she'd gone further than a hundred meters from her house in a month and a half.

“Eh, it could be worse,” Komachi said. “A month is a lot of time to work with. Most incidents only take a day or two to fix, tops.”

“Of course,” Yukari said. “It couldn’t be easier. First we follow our complete lack of clues back to the mastermind, and then it’s a simple matter of defeating somebody who can apparently rewrite reality.”

“Hey, I said we’d have a lot of time, not that it would be easy.”

“It's a good point, though,” Alice said. “Assuming that we all believe this, what do we even do next?”

“Drink?” Rin suggested. “A lot.”

“Other than that.”

“Whatever is going on here, some youkai or another must be responsible.” Yukari shrugged. “I'll ask around. Something this big can't have gone completely unnoticed.”

“I'll see if anyone on the mountain knows anything,” Hatate added, not to be outdone.

“Oh, dang.” Rin leaned over as she talked, grumpily resting her face against Alice's side. “If Yukari and Hatate are gonna _ask questions_ , this whole thing's as good as fixed. I'm really gonna sleep better knowin' that.”

“And...” Alice hesitated. There was a far, far bigger issue that none of them had voiced here, she was now realizing. “Let's say that you do find the culprit. What then?”

“Have them fix Gensokyo, presumably,” Yukari said, raising an eyebrow. “Is something wrong with that?”

“Our Gensokyo? Or the other one?”

“… whatever it takes, I suppose.”

“I'd just like to make sure that we're all on the same page there. Saving Gensokyo is one thing, but...”

“… but I'm not all that keen on gettin' turned into a cat just because the cat was here first,” Rin finished for her.

“Right. That.”

“You're really hung up on this cat thing, huh?” Hatate asked.

“An' you wouldn't be?! I ain't givin' up opposable thumbs!”

“Kasha actually do have opposable thumbs.” Akyuu immediately looked like she regretted the comment. “And I do think it’s worth seriously thinking about restoring the original Gensokyo. Whoever did this, we can't know everything that changed. Even if they didn't intentionally do anything harmful, we really couldn't begin to guess the repercussions of tampering with reality like this.”

“Ew, wait, and so if I was a cat, then that’d mean if Alice is dating me…”

Alice rested a hand on Rin's back, rubbing it to calm her down, and shot Akyuu a stony expression. “I'm sure the idea doesn't bother _you._ You'll remember everything regardless.”

“It actually does,” Akyuu said. “Just because I remember another life doesn’t mean that don’t I cherish the one that I have here. But, if that’s what it takes…”

“That's a pretty big 'if',” Hatate said.

“Might want to wait until we actually know what’s going on to worry about stuff like that,” Komachi suggested.

“SOUNDS TO ME LIKE...” Mokou's voice boomed across the room, cutting off the slowly-swelling argument. Strong lungs for such a frail girl. Once the conversation died down, she went quiet, shooting a warning glance around the room and not looking the slightest bit self-conscious about the outburst. “… you've all decided to believe this.”

“Eh, I mean. It's barely even the weirdest thing I've heard this week,” Hatate said.

Rin ignored her, brooding in annoyance.

“I won't _believe_ it until I've seen some evidence, but I'll cooperate with you for now,” Alice said.

“I believe you as much as I believe any other troublemaker right now,” Yukari said. “You’ve drawn my attention to a problem, and I’ll decide the truth of the matter myself.”

“Looking into it would make a good excuse to get out of the netherworld now and then. Gotta stretch my legs occasionally,” Komachi said.

Mokou nodded once the opinions were in. “Sounds more or less like a yes. Look. This is a lot to think about, and we don't have much to work off of. We've got time. Don't have to make a decision tonight. It'd probably be best if everyone just goes home and thinks about it for a while. Cool your heads off.”

Conversations started almost as soon as she'd said that, and Mokou cut them off with a raised hand and a sharp, “ _Except_ —” she paused to wait for the conversation to die down again. “—I've got to ask all of you to not tell anybody.”

“Huh?” Hatate didn't look convinced. “Why's that?”

“People are going to panic when they hear this kind of thing. No use making them worried before we can do anything about it. And as proud and greedy as youkai are, if word gets out that everybody's living somebody else's rightful life...”

Yukari shuddered. “When you put it like that, yes. I'd rather not be breaking up youkai fights for the next three weeks.”

“Exactly.” Mokou shuffled over to the corner of the room and slumped down onto a cushion with a loud sigh of relief. She was frozen in an appearance of eternal youth, but still managed to look like this conversation had aged her a few decades. “Now get out of here. I'm tired of hearing you.”

* * *

The murmur of conversation resumed. Gradually, the room filled with footsteps and the rustle of cloth, as everybody stood to leave.

Yukari stood too, but didn't head for the door just yet. Komachi shot her a curious look, and she tried to look as reassuring as she could.

She held her tongue until the rest of the guests had left. Only herself, Akyuu, and Mokou remained. Neither of them looked like they were happy with her continued presence, although in very different ways. Akyuu looked apprehensive. Mokou just looked like she was debating whether to see whether she had any guards left to drag Yukari off.

"Something else you wanted?" Mokou asked, without looking up from tidying the papers on the table.

"Yes, actually. Those."

"Just give you the papers that would start riots if they got out, that Akyuu worked on for most of a week? Don't think so."

"Give me the papers that people would think were a poor joke if they got out, which might help me resolve the incident that is _threatening to destroy Gensokyo_ according to you."

"She does have a point," Akyuu said. "... I remember them all, anyway. I can recreate them if need be. Again."

Mokou's expression suggested that she was still not fond of the idea. With a sigh, though, she gave the stack of papers a few taps against the table and thrust them up toward Yukari. "Here. Not sure what you expect to find in there, though."

"Neither am I. I'll know if I find it, though. Oh, and Akyuu?"

Akyuu obviously hadn't been expecting to get dragged into this. "Yes?"

"You have until dawn to restore any history you might have misplaced." Yukari gave her the lightest tap with her gohei, right between the horns. "Please understand that this is me being lenient, considering that we're apparently such good friends and all. By all rights, I should exterminate the both of you on general principle."

"Of course." Akyuu sounded almost offended, like the implication that she'd leave history in this intermediate state was an affront to her pride as a historian and a hakutaku. "I'll get started on it as soon as you're gone."

Normally, such a blunt invitation to leave would encourage Yukari to linger for another hour, just to spite them. Tonight, though, didn't feel like that sort of occasion. "Then I'll leave you to it. Good night, ladies."

The two muttered noncommittal responses. Yukari turned, and made her way out of the manor.

Night had fallen while they were wrapped up in revelations about the nature of reality. Even in the dark, Yukari could make out the signs of their recent battle. To one side, a mess of ofuda, already starting to scatter in the wind. To the other, the grass was riddled with furrows and gouges from scrambling feet and swiping blades. The household staff were going to throw a fit. She could at least take some pleasure in knowing that Mokou was going to have a worse morning than she would.

Komachi was lingering outside, her hands on the back of her head and staring up at the night sky. She didn't lower her gaze as Yukari approached, but obviously heard her. “I guess this means I've got to find somewhere else to crash when I visit Gensokyo, huh?”

“I wouldn't mind you eating somebody else's snacks for a change, but I'm not sure what made you think that.”

“C'mon, I know you. You're going to go home and become a hermit until you've figured out what's going on.”

... Yukari had to admit, she was probably right. "If it's to save Gensokyo, I don't have much choice, do I?"

“Eh, I mean. Is it really worth saving Gensokyo if you've gotta give up your afternoon nap for it? Seems pretty harsh.”

“We all must make sacrifices in times of crisis, I'm afraid.”

“And here I was hoping we could break out that new bottle of sake tonight.”

"I should have known. I'll tell you what: if you don't hear from me within the next few days, come visit and we'll drink the sake together."

“Hmm. Yeah, deal. Maybe I'll drag you out somewhere while I'm at it. Have to make sure you don't start growing mildew or something.”

Yukari really didn't know if she was going to be able to relax with an incident like this looming over her. But, Komachi didn't sound inclined to take no for an answer, either. She wasn't exactly subtle. Yukari could tell when somebody was trying to thinly veil their concern for her. “Very well. I accept. But...” Yukari stepped past Komachi toward the manor's front gate. “I do still get to worry about it all I want tonight, so I suggest that you go home for now.”

“Eh, fine. If you're that eager to start worrying, I'll leave you alone. G'night and all.”

Their paths took them in the same direction only as far as the nearest intersection. The closest path back to the Netherworld and the Hakurei shrine lay in different directions. Soon, Yukari was walking alone, with Gensokyo's most portentous stack of notes clasped to her chest.

She could have flown, but decided against it. Some quiet introspection as she walked would do her good. And if a youkai decided to take the opportunity to jump a lone traveler at night... well, she wouldn't mind taking out some stress on it.

 _Yukari Yakumo_. She rolled the name around in her head as she walked. It sounded weird, of course. Almost as weird as the picture of Reimu wearing a Hakurei shrine maiden outfit. Much less weird than the picture of her wearing something more like _Reimu's_ outfit. And, let's see, if she'd been around since the time of Akyuu's first reincarnation... hm. That would make a nice topic of conversation at the next party, at least. _'You'd better show me some respect. I'm a thousand years old.'_

Nope, even weirder. She knew some ancient youkai, of course, but the thought of being that old herself was unthinkable. When she'd become the Hakurei shrine maiden, it had been an unspoken understanding that she'd be lucky to live until thirty. Now she was supposed to believe that she was older than Gensokyo itself?

None of it felt real. Neither did Akyuu's warnings about Gensokyo's impending doom. But she was going to have to believe both if she was going to fix them.

Before she knew it, the torii was in sight. Time flew when you were having fun.

Over the years, Yukari had made a few improvements to the shrine. Nothing big—she wasn't quite ambitious enough for 'big.' But little things to make her life easier. The donation box had a net draped inside of it so she could scoop out an entire festival worth of donations in one go. The pantry was warded heavily enough to blow the hand off any youkai who tried mooching from her without permission. She'd tried to get a breeding population of carp going in the pond out back, so she could scoop one out for dinner when she was short on other options. It hadn't worked, but she still saw one in there now and then.

For now, she made her way up to the donation box and lifted the top. Sure enough, the net was still laying across the bottom, supported at each corner by a hook. A few coins glimmered in the moonlight. Not enough to be worth dealing with for now. The true message was clear, anyway: no matter what the case might be in the "real" Gensokyo, for now, the Hakurei shrine still recognized its shrine maiden. Its _sole_ shrine maiden.

There had been no reason to doubt it, really, but it was still reassuring. After giving it one last glance, she closed the lid and made her way inside for what was shaping up to be a long, long night.

* * *

Alice Kirisame did not take being defeated well.

For a shopkeeper’s daughter, she’d never been good at the interpersonal parts of running a store. When haggling, she was either uselessly obstinate or too generous, with no ability to gauge just how far she could get somebody to budge on their price. She couldn't make a sales pitch to save her life, and her interactions with customers usually left them feeling like she was annoyed at them. But by the age of eight, she was better with numbers than most adults. She had a knack for refurbishing the used items that came through the store, and read every book that she could get her hands on. For most of her childhood, it seemed like the store would be in good hands after she inherited it.

And then, she’d picked up the basics of magic, and all of that had changed.

She’d started with nothing. Magic was almost unheard of within the human village. She’d taught herself entire branches of arcane theory from first principles. Gensokyo was not designed to make it easy for a human to claw their way up the food chain, and every bit of her power was the product of years of study and work. Every tome she read had to be tracked down first, and they rarely came without a price attached—whether that was in money, favors, or sheer effort. Every potion she used represented hours of gathering reagents and brewing. Every new spell required weeks of studying and experimentation. If she made it out of a fight in one piece, it wasn't because of supernatural hardiness or blessed luck, but her skill.

In a land of youkai and gods, she was a mere human. She hadn't just risen from almost nothing. She had proven time and time again that her mind, skill, and dedication were a match for any challenger in Gensokyo.

… or, almost any challenger, at least. She wasn’t going to forget the sight of Yukari smirking down at her in victory any time soon.

She and Rin walked out of the village together, but soon had to part ways at a fork in the road. As much as Alice would have liked to comfort her tonight, Rin needed to wait on her mistress. It was just as well. Alice, she was realizing, had her own matters to attend to.

Her hands were balled into fists. She coaxed them apart, slung her broom under herself, and took off. 

It wasn't a long trip. On foot, it only took a few minutes. Flying, she’d barely even crested the nearby trees before she spotted a familiar light. A slight adjustment of the broom’s trajectory was enough to aim toward it. Soon, familiar patterns of trees were scrolling by beneath her, illuminated by the moon. By this point, she practically knew the treetops in this area by heart.

What she _didn’t_ know by heart, though, was the ever-shifting maze of surplus outside world oddities that filled the clearing ahead. A line of them formed a loose perimeter, inside of which others had been scattered around with just enough room to slip between them. They were hard to miss from above, and unmistakable: only Kourindou had that much gleaming metal in one place.

And it _was_ all polished enough to gleam in the moonlight. Kosuzu adored her collection, after all. Against all odds, considering how frequently she’d misused some gadget and nearly burnt down the store.

Alice came to a landing in the biggest gap she could find between the junk, then started picking her way toward the shop. The newest addition to Kosuzu’s collection, judging by its proximity to the front door, was a squat metal canister, with two handles at the top and a valve between them. Most of the writing on it was barely decipherable to her, with outside world jargon every alternate word. Whatever it was, Kosuzu had already restored it from whatever state she’d found it in, polishing it up to a bright shine. Alice would never understand her fascination with this stuff, but she could appreciate the craftsmanship.

The shop was closed for the night, of course. Alice also knew that the door almost certainly wouldn’t be locked. Sure enough, a push was enough to send it swinging open, announcing her arrival with a chime. She couldn’t see Kosuzu anywhere, but since the interior was even more of a maze than the exterior, that didn’t necessarily mean much. “Kosuzu? I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Oh, Alice! Good evening!” Kosuzu’s voice came from the back room, followed by the sound of footsteps.

When Kosuzu came into view, Alice immediately knew that she’d been working. She didn’t exactly hide it well. Her hands were smudged with grease, and she was holding a screwdriver—outside world tools for outside world goods. Her hair was in its usual pigtails, and also like usual, they looked frizzy and disheveled, like she’d been wearing them for days. Maybe she had.

Kosuzu put the screwdriver down and wiped her hands on a cloth. “I was hoping you’d drop by. It’s been a while!”

“I’m sorry. Rin’s been very jealous of my time.” Alice crossed the room, making her way up to the front counter. “I see that you have some new acquisitions since the last time I was by. What’s the tank near the door?”

“Hmm? Oh, right, that one! That’s what they call a…” Kosuzu paused, frowning seriously as she sounded out the words. “He-li-um canister.”

“I see. And what, exactly, is a ‘helium canister’ for?”

“According to my powers, you’re supposed to be able to pump the gas into things and make them fly, but… I breathed in a lot of it, and I still can’t fly. All it did was make my voice funny.”

“… that sounds dangerous on _multiple_ levels. Please don’t go inhaling mystery gases.”

“It was a one-time thing.” Kosuzu looked suitably chastised, though. “Is everything okay, though? I heard that there was some kind of disturbance in the village earlier.”

Right, the spell card duels. Word was going to get around that something was up. It was hard to hide a laser battle in the sky. “There was, but everything’s fine now. I— _we_ took care of it.”

“Good. I always worry about you when things like that happen.” Before Alice could defend herself, she was scooped up in a hug. She returned it as well as she could. When Kosuzu pulled back, she looked a bit sheepish about her enthusiasm, fidgeting with her glasses. “So what’s the occasion, then?”

Now it was Alice’s turn to look embarrassed. She really did need to stop in and see Kosuzu more often. But, Kosuzu had guessed correctly. She was here on business. Raising the mini-hakkero from her belt, she offered it up. “Do you have some time tonight? I have a few ideas for improvements.”

“For you? Always. Did you have any problems with it during the fight, or…?”

“No, nothing like that.” Alice gave her a tight-lipped smile. “I just get the feeling that I’m going to be relying on it a lot over the next few weeks.”


	6. Chapter 5

Komachi hummed to herself as she walked—a loud, arrhythmic thing somewhere between a confused marching tune and a drunken ballad. Her sword was thrown back over her shoulder in a casual manner that would have gotten her chastised when she was younger. Her phantom half bobbed up and down as it drifted along, as close to skipping as something shaped like an oversized tadpole was going to get.

It was just that kind of day. Okay, sure, it was hot and muggy, and there was _apparently_ some kind of existential crisis looming over Gensokyo, but other than those, things were pretty good. The household's discretionary fund was full, and as the one who did most of the shopping, Komachi had exercised her discretion by deciding that it would be best spent on a night of drinking. After all, she the only person other than Lady Eiki who lived at Hakugyokurou. Anything that was good for her was, by definition, good for at least half of the household.

Plus, she'd managed to get out of trimming bushes all day, by leaving a few minutes before Eiki was definitely going to ask her to do so.

Plus, it had been a few days, so she had Yukari's tacit permission to bust into the shrine and drag her bestie out for a night on the town.

And Yukari still had that booze that they were supposed to drink. She wasn't about to forget that.

So, yeah. All things considered, a pretty good day.

“Hey, Yukari,” she announced, before she'd even quite reached the shrine's front door. “Decided you're allowed to relax for five minutes yet?”

She opened the door and found a disaster waiting for her.

It was pretty obvious that Yukari hadn't left the shrine since the last time Komachi had seen her. Or, if she had, it had been brief. She hadn't wasted much time on things like cleaning, either. Dirty cups, plates, and bowls formed some kind of food graveyard atop the table and on the floor around it. Piles of Akyuu's papers were scattered around, with occasional sheets in Yukari's own handwriting in between them.

Komachi leaned in to read one at random.

_**Youkai who became human:** Alice, Hatate, Rin, Keine, Rinnosuke, ~~me~~_  
_**Humans who became youkai:** Marisa, Sanae, Sakuya, Akyuu, Kosuzu, Reimu_

Various arrows were drawn linking names in the two lists, with a plus or minus next to each one. Komachi wasn't sure what this was supposed to mean, but she knew what it _did_ mean: it was a good thing she hadn't waited a day longer. Yukari wasn't the type to give up on something like this until it was solved. When faced with an unsolvable problem... well.

Yukari herself was laying at the far end of the table, halfway concealed beneath it and surrounded by a halo of notes and a few more dirty dishes. These notes looked less coherent. It seemed like Komachi was finding the more recent (and deranged) strata. Before she could say anything, Yukari preempted her. “Can't you see that I'm getting my beauty rest?” She halfway groaned it out, without budging from her spot the slightest bit.

“Well, it doesn't look like it's working. You look like crap.”

“I could say the same to you.”

“You haven't even opened your eyes. How are you supposed to know?”

“I'm still right. I _could_ say it if I wanted to.” With a sigh of defeat, Yukari opened her eyes, squinting against the light. “What time is it?”

“Uh, I don't know? A bit after noon?”

“I slept longer than I should.”

“That probably means you needed it.”

Yukari didn't answer, but slouched her way up to sitting, half-limp and with one shoulder drooping. Kind of like watching a candle melt in reverse. Once she was more or less upright, she grabbed a few of the newer-looking notes from the table and skimmed their contents, then tossed them dismissively aside.

“Have you figured anything out yet?” Komachi asked, even though she already knew the answer.

“No. There has to be some clue. Nothing this big happens without leaving a trail. I had hoped I could find some inconsistencies by comparing the two versions of the Chronicle, but...”

“It all lines up that well, huh?”

“The other way around. There are too many differences. The other Gensokyo’s Scarlet Devil Mansion showed up generations later, for example. The head of their Hakugyokurou disrupted the weather to try _empowering_ the Saigyou Ayakashi rather than seal it. They tried to invade the moon, twice. The latter was recent, even. Well, I suppose I should say 'we.' I apparently masterminded the whole affair.”

“Huh. Was that their version of that time the Lunarians hid the moon?”

“No, they had that, too. Their Moriya shrine was better at diplomacy, though, so when it appeared, things on the mountain were rather less...”

“Shooty?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I wouldn't turn down an opportunity to go to the moon. … there's something to keep you from falling off, right? It seems pretty high up.”

Yukari shot her a tired glance. “You seem very cavalier about this, Komachi.”

“Did you forget? I live in the Netherworld. You could practically say I'm a cog in the big wheel of reincarnation, myself. Pretty much every day, I see somebody who just died recently. And meanwhile, other people have finished up their time in the afterlife or some hell, and then they're off to be reborn in a new body with a new name. It’s going to happen to all of us sooner or later, unless we attain Nirvana or something I guess. In the grand scheme of things, identity's just as transient as anything else. Might as well make my peace with it now.” Komachi paused. “… also, I think that other version of me fights with a giant scythe, right? That seems pretty cool.” She mimed a few attacks and made some swooshing noises to go with them.

“How philosophical. Remind me, is the scythe thing Kant or Lao Tzu?”

“Dunno who those people are. That's a Komachi original. On the house, since it seems like you could use the pick-me-up.” Komachi found a relatively open spot on the floor, then flopped down with enough force to rattle the clutter around her. Her phantom half drifted down into her lap, and she crossed her arms, halfway resting atop it. “Speaking of which, I came here to drag you out of the shrine. You promised.”

“I did promise, didn't I? … I really shouldn't be reluctant. All this hard work doesn't suit me.”

“Yeah, exactly. If you weren't napping when I'd found you, I would have worried you were sick or something.”

“I'm the Hakurei shrine maiden. I don't have the luxury of ignoring incidents when they don't inconvenience me or affect my employer. And if you've forgotten, this might be an existential crisis.”

“That's all the more reason to take a break and have some fun. Trust me, I've seen people who show up in the Netherworld after working their life away. None of them are too happy about it. So, personally, I'd say you need a good meal and a long night spent with two or three bottles of sake.”

“Then you’re going to be very disappointed, Komachi, because I still only have the one bottle.”

“Ah, well.”

Komachi fished a coin purse out of her robe. Or, at least, something that was distantly related to a coin purse. Most coin purses weren't quite that big, or quite that full. It was stuffed so full, in fact, that the coins didn't even jingle when she gave it a bounce. She had to loosen the drawstrings and do it again. When it did jingle, though, it was the deep, satisfying _clunk_ of enough money to fund the shrine for a year, or the noble manor of a ghost mistress for about a month and a half.

“… drinks are on me tonight.”

Yukari didn't do a very good job of hiding her interest. Obviously this changed her priorities a bit. “Well. Sake can be used for purification. It's only proper for a shrine maiden to drink some regularly.”

“That's right. This is for your spiritual health.” Komachi tucked the coin purse back into her robe and slowly rose to standing. “Better get moving, then. People will get the wrong impression if a shrine maiden slacks on such an important duty for too long.”

* * *

“H-hey! Wait up! Wait up!”

The shout was all the warning that Rin got, but she was used to it. As the sound of little footsteps approached from behind, she paused time and glanced back.

Two small figures were frozen in the middle of barreling down the hallway. In front, a youkai was stuck mid-stride, hovering just off the ground with her mouth wide open and pointy, fuzzy ears flattened down against her head in excitement. Behind her, a fairy was charging forward to tackle her, with golden filigree wings folded back for maximum aerodynamic potential.

Nothing wrong with kids tackling each other. That was just good clean fun. She'd just finished mopping the hall, though, and if they kept running a few more meters, they'd probably end up skidding until they plowed head-first into the wall. Probably the kind of thing that she should deter, as a fastidious maid n' all.

She leaned the mop against the wall and strolled back into position between the two. After a moment's consideration, she grabbed each collar, then braced herself and allowed time to resume.

Physics picked up right from where it had left off. The two youkai resumed their chase without a speck of lost momentum. At the speeds they were traveling, they had no chance to realize what had happened until it was too late. Their clothes went taut. Their feet flew out from under them. Soon they were both dangling by their collars, held mere centimeters from busting their asses on the floor by Rin’s benevolence.

“Ain't really watching where you're goin', are ya? I just mopped in here, y’know.”

“So what?!” the youkai huffed, giving a few thrashes of protest against the restraining hand. “I'll track up your dumb floor if I wanna!”

“Nope! Because I’ll chuck ya out a window if you do. But I ain't talkin' about that anyway! It's real slick! You were gonna slip and fall!”

“Hah! I'm super-tough! That kinda thing wouldn't stop me.”

“Ain’t saying it would, but if you bust your nose on the wall, it’s gonna get blood everywhere. That stuff stains real bad, n' Lady Satori don't like to have blood dried all over. Says it reflects bad on her. _Manque de subtilité_ an' all, y’know?”

That got through to the pair. The youkai guiltily lowered her eyes. The fairy looked up, wide-eyed. “We, we'd definitely clean it up! I'm sorry! Please don't tell her, okay?!”

“Not planning to! Just a friendly warnin’, sis.” Rin released their collars, letting them come to rest on the ground. “Now scram. I’ve got work to do.”

The two didn't even acknowledge her. The youkai gave a rambunctious squeal and broke into a sprint, her feet thudding down the hallway. The fairy hollered, “Get back here!” and took off after her. Within a few seconds, the two were indistinguishable from the rest of the mansion's daily sounds. Somewhere in the distance and a floor higher, something landed with a concerningly heavy thump. Loud laughter echoed down the corridor. A few muffled metallic clangs suggested that there was a swordfight going on somewhere, for _some_ reason.

The Scarlet Devil Mansion was lively as usual.

It was always like this. Satori had a habit of taking in the needy and the outcast, giving them a place to stay in exchange for their company and a bit of help here and there. Rin was pretty sure the fairy was some kind of snow fairy she'd taken in because the kid couldn't handle warm weather. A good quarter of the denizens were just minor beast youkai and newly-awakened tsukumogami who needed the protection of somebody more powerful while they got the hang of this 'being sentient' thing. Rin herself had just been a human kid, lost (or abandoned?) in the forest around Youkai Mountain at a young enough age that she couldn't quite remember which side of the barrier she'd been born on. Not many redheads in the village, though, which narrowed the options down a bit.

Alice insisted that the fact that she did this entire maid thing voluntarily, without any pay but her usual room and board, technically made it a _hobby_ rather than a career. It had been the crux of their first and only argument so far.

Alice was really good in a lot of ways, but she just had no appreciation for what Rin liked to think of as _l'esthétique de la domestique_. Rin only knew a smattering of French from an outside world dictionary she'd found at Kourindou, but using lots of French was a super important part of _l'esthétique_.

Rin grabbed the mop and resumed cleaning, starting with the footsteps those little brats had left on her freshly-mopped floor. Next time she'd just keep her mouth shut and watch them slide into the wall. That'd learn 'em.

Once the hall was clean, she moved on with her work for the day. Rin wasn't anybody's idea of a traditional maid. Her language was rough, and while she wore the uniform, her customizations gave most people the sense that she was on her way to a particularly daring funeral. She cooked, cleaned, and saw to the manor's daily affairs, but she did them under her own direction and by a schedule entirely of her own design, which mostly happened inside pockets of time that nobody else could see.

It was an arrangement that worked out well. Rin got all the niceties she could ever want in exchange for some of her practically unlimited time, and Satori got practically unlimited maid service, with the caveat that sometimes Rin would ambush her with an entire three-course dinner or redecorate a wing of the mansion overnight. A win-win situation.

Today's workload was pretty light. There were dishes to do. The sheets in the mansion's forty-three rarely-used guest bedrooms needed changed. There was a squeaky hinge on a door into the foyer, and she oiled it. A few corners held unwelcome spiderwebs, and some other spots were _missing_ spiderwebs; she had very particular aesthetics when it came to decorating for a vampire. The windows on the east side of the second floor needed cleaned, because while they were always covered by heavy black curtains, a lady had to have standards, dammit. 

And after dealing with all of that, it had been almost an hour, or something more like seven hours if you counted frozen time. That meant that she needed to attend to one of the few routine items in her schedule. It was almost noon, after all. The mistresses of the house would be going to bed soon.

For Koishi, that meant a glass of warm milk, with what little blood Rin could slip in unnoticed. She’d developed a knack at gauging just how much blood could be masked by the taste of common foodstuffs.

For Satori, that meant cognac. A _bit_ of cognac, because Gensokyo wasn't known for producing much of it, and Utsuho's few attempts to get a vineyard going hadn't gone anywhere. After pouring a modest splash into a glass, Rin sat it atop a velvet cushion, carrying it one-handed as she made her way up to the master suite. Walking around using a single hand to hold junk on little velvet cushions was l'esthétique as _hell_. … she did freeze time, though. That way if she tripped, the glass would freeze in the air, and she could scoop up the contents before there were any witnesses.

She had to let time resume once she reached the door, letting her pull it open and step into Satori’s bedroom. Satori herself was reading in an armchair, already wearing her sleeping gown. She glanced up as she heard the door open, just long enough to shoot a wan smile. “Ah, Orin. You're right on time.”

“Yep! Controllin' it makes that real easy.” It was maybe the ten zillionth time that Rin had made the joke. As far as she was concerned, it never got old. Stepping up to Satori’s side, she plucked the glass from its cushion and delivered it to the end table with a careful flourish.

“Were you able to get Koishi to drink any blood?”

“She’s up next. I think she’s getting’ wise to my tricks, though. I really don’t wanna give her too much and make her all sulky. But give her too little n’… y’know.”

“Yes, I... unfortunately do know. I'll have another talk with her tomorrow.”

“If it’d help, I was thinkin’ maybe she could have some of my blood? That way it’d be consensual, so she wouldn’t have to feel guilty!” Rin clasped the cushion to her chest, giving Satori a hopeful look. “Me n’ Hatate were talking the other day, and they’ve got ways to do that in the outside world now. Just take out blood without even hurtin’ ya. I’d be okay with it, really! I got a lot to spare!”

“That's very sweet of you, Orin, but I think her objections go a bit deeper than that.”

“Well… it really ain’t a big deal. I was hopin’ to get some wicked scars out of it anyway. Y’know, a pentagram on my wrist or somethin’. Might just up and do it anyway.”

“I'd prefer it if you kept your blood on the inside when possible. But thank you. I’ll work it into our conversation if I find an opening.”

Satori finally folded her book closed and grabbed her glass of cognac, swishing it in her hand to warm it up slightly. All part of her pre-bedtime ritual. Rin started attending to her own parts in it. She moved over to the room's single massive window, looking out onto a balcony. Well, it was _next_ to a balcony, at least. There were already two curtains over it, filtering out enough of the sunlight to make it safe for a vampire, if not quite pleasant to linger in. With a tug, she freed the third and final curtain. It swung down from both sides, like a pair of scissors shearing through the sunlight. A few tugs of a sash were enough to seal it tightly, shutting out all but a handful of stray photons and leaving the room in candlelight.

“Thank you.” Satori took a sip of the cognac, then looked thoughtfully down at the floor. Her wings gave a few idle flicks behind her. “Mmh. Orin?”

“Yeah? Wassup?”

“I've been thinking about the current situation. … not Koishi, the other one.”

“Gensokyo blowin' up, me bein' a cat, et cetera?”

“Right, that. I don't want to ask you to do anything reckless, but... I agree with you. This other Gensokyo had its chance. We're the ones who are around here and now, and there's no reason we should prioritize their existence over ours.”

“… oh. I mean. I think all of us were already leanin’ that way, but…”

“But now I've given you an order, so you don't need to worry about it. That makes things simpler, right?”

“Yep! That’s a real load off my shoulders. Not too keen on livin' in a cave, huh?”

“Not hardly.” Satori tilted the glass back and drained the last of her drink, then gave a soft sigh of satisfaction. “I looked up a picture of a satori after we talked. They have detached eyes hanging outside of their bodies, and some of them are covered in hair. I'd be doing the Scarlet family name an injustice if I let something like that happen. As if calling my dear maid a cat weren't already bad enough.”

“Aw, thanks, boss.” Rin walked over to the chair, and shared a loose one-armed hug with Satori. She grabbed the glass as she straightened back up. “'n don't you worry. You ain't gettin' turned into some kinda... three-eyed psychic cave ape on my watch, neither. I guarantee it.”

A wave of soft creaks and groans ran through the house as the pressure subtly changed, followed by the heavy _thud_ of the massive front door closing. It was one of the few noises that could consistently be heard through the entire house, over even the sounds of constant youkai shenanigans. Company had arrived.

“Oh, dang, bet that's Alice. We're s'posed to run down to the village today.”

“Go see her. I can take care of myself.”

“Sure thing. 'night, boss.”

“Good night, Orin. Please, try to enjoy yourself today.”

* * *

Yukari was used to the stares by now.

Being the Hakurei shrine maiden was enough to inspire them by itself. As a youkai-hunter, one of the few humans who lived beyond the village's walls, and one of the few spiritual authorities in Gensokyo, she was a bit of a minor celebrity. The red-and-white outfit didn't help, since it didn't _quite_ blend into the village's sea of more muted colors. And then she was walking next to Komachi, who was carrying a sword so long that it threatened to drag the ground, and had half of her soul flying alongside her. They didn't make for a stealthy pair.

That had its benefits, though. As they made their way down the street, she could already sense one or two smaller figures eyeing her thoughtfully.

Komachi, on the other hand, either didn't notice or didn't care. “So,” she said, “anything you're in the mood for? Might be a good idea to eat before we go straight to drinking, I guess. I heard the fishermen have gotten some pretty good hauls lately. A few places down by the river are supposed to have an all-you-can-eat kind of deal going with salt-grilled stuff, as long as you're not too picky about what kind of fish you get.”

“Hmm. Acceptable. I'm afraid that I'll need to take a detour, though.”

“Huh? Where to? … if it's that bookshop again, I might go find something to keep me busy while you're doing that.”

“I'm almost certain that reading a book wouldn't kill you, Komachi. But, no. This should be brief. It will make sense once we're there, I'm sure.”

“Uh, okay. So are you going to tell me where it is, or...?”

Yukari shot her a teasing smile. “And whyever would I do that?”

With Komachi in the dark, Yukari ended up taking the lead. First, a quick stop at one of the village's few confectionary shops to purchase some cheap candies. She made sure that the bag was hard to miss as she looped around to pass in front of the schoolhouse. Class wasn't in session, but as usual, a few kids were still milling about in front of it. After a quiet conversation, a few of them hurried after her, trailing the two from a distance.

And even more little heads turned as she made her way down an adjacent street. It would ruin her mystique to look back, but she was fairly certain that there were at least six or seven children following her now. That would do.

Yukari turned to walk into a narrow alley between two shops.

“Er, are you gonna tell me what this is about?” Komachi asked. “Seems like we're just sort of wandering.”

“Far from it.”

Yukari turned around, just in time to see the small crowd of children gathering uncertainly at the end of the alley. One of them shied back, hiding behind the corner to avoid her gaze. None of them seemed eager to approach her.

“Well? Get in here. Don't be shy.” Yukari raised the candy bag and gave it a shake, like she was trying to summon a pet with a bag of treats. “I only brought three, so it's first-come, first-serve.”

That worked. As a unit, the children hurried forward, elbowing past each other as they made their way into the alley. They'd barely even gotten into speaking distance before they started clamoring over each other for their chance to be heard.

“Miss Yukari! I want one, c'mon!”

“—dad said that he saw a kappa n' it was—”

“—just, I didn't get one last time, and...!”

Yukari raised a finger to silence them. A hush immediately fell over the kids. They knew by now that anyone who angered her was going to be walking away from here empty-handed. She could feel Komachi watching in bewilderment, and it only enhanced the proceedings. “Candy,” she said, giving the bag another shake, “is only for those good boys and girls who bring me interesting information. I'm sure that you know this, right? Now, who has something for me?”

The children exchanged uneasy glances. Finally, one of them raised his voice again. “My dad said he saw a kappa draggin' this big cart of stuff into a building...?”

“Where was the building?”

The boy shrank back, like he hadn't been expecting this challenge. “Out, out by the east gate, I think! Across from the gambling parlor except he says I'm not supposed to say it's a gambling parlor 'cuz that's bad.”

Yukari smiled. Some probable information on youkai activity around the village, _and_ some free blackmail material. Adults just didn’t give you two-for-one specials like that. She fished a candy from the bag. Every child watched in reverence as she lowered it into the boy’s waiting hand.

“Who's next?”

Again, multiple children shouted their offers.

“My big sister said the lady at the tailor's can do curses that make people never get married!”  
“—saw a really weird dog—“  
“—big thing movin' outside, and it made a funny noise like 'graaaargh'!”

Yukari stared down at them, not showing the slightest hint of a reaction until they'd exhausted themselves. This time, she had to consider the options a bit. Well, two of them, at least. The lady at the tailor just had a bit of a squint that the more superstitious types found creepy. A regrettable display of prejudice, but not supernatural in the least.

She finally fixed her gaze on the second child. “And what about your ‘weird dog,’ hmm?”

“Um... it was really big, and it only had one eye, and when we looked away it disappeared!”

Yukari considered. Odds were that it was just a normal one-eyed feral dog. Plenty of those around. But on the off-chance that it wasn't... “Where did you see it?”

“Down by the river, that spot where the old ladies wash their clothes all the time!”

Yukari nodded. With even more ceremony than the first one, she silently lowered the second candy into the girl's hands. Then, she raised the final piece of candy from the bag.

The children stared at it, but none of them seemed quite so bold as to think that they could claim it. “Well?”

Still, none of them answered. After a few seconds of silence, she singled out a girl near the back with her gaze. “You... your older brother is a carpenter, right?”

“Um, r-right!” the girl squeaked. “… why...?”

“Is he still courting that girl? The dyer's daughter, I believe.”

“Uh-huh! Um, he's, um.” This was apparently a lot of pressure for the girl to be under. “They're s'posed to get engaged soon!”

Yukari nodded. She presented the final candy to the girl, who stared at it in awestruck silence before snatching it up.

Yukari took her time in closing the bag back up. A sense of ceremony worked wonders. So did giving the less fortunate participants some time to get good and jealous of their more productive peers. Once the now-empty bag was tucked away again, she shot them a dismissive wave. “That's all for now.” In a pleasant tone, she added, “Remember, if you tell any grownups about this, oni will eat all of your bones one by one as punishment.”

The threat was good motivation to get the kids to leave. Squealing and arguing, they all took off toward the alley's mouth.

Komachi at least waited until they were out of earshot to ask, “Seriously?”

“No, of course not. Oni aren't going to eat their bones. Don't be ridiculous, Komachi.”

“You know what I mean, c'mon.”

“Children notice a lot of things that adults overlook,” Yukari said, leading the way out of the alley. “They're much easier to bribe, too.”

“Uh-huh. So what was that thing about the carpenter, then?”

“He comes to the shrine every Saturday and draws an omikuji. If I replace them all with 'very lucky in romance' fortunes before his next visit, it should make an impression.”

“Ever wonder if stuff like that is bad karma?”

“It's good for the shrine. Cultivating a reputation is half the battle.”

“Uh-huh. So is that it for your detour?”

“That's all, yes. Now, I believe you were going to treat me to all-you-can-eat fish?”

“You still have a good memory when it comes to free food, huh? Yep, let's go. The lunch rush should be over now too, so I guess it works out.”

Komachi stepped past her, taking the lead as they turned and headed toward the river. They hadn't gotten too far before Yukari spotted the unmistakable sight of a blue witch's hat peeking up above the other pedestrians in the distance. A witch's hat, and it was heading their way.

She really wasn't in any hurry to see Alice again just yet... and she was pretty sure she'd glimpsed some red hair somewhere over there, too. “Hmm, perhaps we should take a detour. The road ahead feels more annoying than usual.”

Komachi eyed her. “What in the world is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what I said. Now.” Yukari looked around and found a familiar side street. “Let's go this way.”

“You can't expect me to just go along with whatever cryptic stuff you say.”

“Isn’t that the basis of our entire relationship? Now, this way, p—”

And, she was too slow. Rin had seen her. “Oh, hey! Afternoon!”

At least Alice looked like she was no happier about this than Yukari was. She shot the two an unenthusiastic wave. Still, she followed along as Rin led the way toward the two of them.

“Alice. Rin.” Yukari dipped her head in a begrudging greeting.

“Yukari.” Alice did the same.

“How are you doing? Shot at any shrine maidens lately? Taken any more work without even knowing why you’re being hired?”

“Y'know if you go talking about people shooting each other in public, the villagers are going to think you're weirder than they already do, right?” Komachi asked.

“Trust me,” Alice said. “I think that's part of the appeal for her. As far as the other night goes, I was hired. I do in fact need to make money now and then, but I hope there aren’t any hard feelings.”

“None at all.” Yukari kept her voice just sweet enough to make it clear that she was still annoyed by it, but was being magnanimous by forgiving the slight for now. “I'm sure that you only had Gensokyo's best interests in mind.”

“And the paycheck,” Rin added. “That Hieda kid's loaded. So anyway, what brings you two into town?”

Komachi shrugged. “Food. Usual stuff. I'd offer to let you join us, but you're probably doing couple stuff, right?”

“I mean, ain't gonna argue none if you wanna give me free food. Nothin' more romantic than that. Where're ya headed? I'm feelin'—”

Rin was cut off by a few distant shouts. Upset shouts. The kind of shouts that people made when they were in danger, rather than mad. The entire street slowed to a stop as everybody reacted, and the four exchanged glances.

“… that can't be good, right?” Alice asked.

Komachi was already sprinting past them, headed toward the source of the commotion.

* * *

Alice wasn't great at running.

She was a witch. Physical confrontation wasn't high on her list of priorities. If she wanted to get somewhere in a hurry, she flew. This part of the village had a lot of low-hanging awnings, though, and being seen flying across the village in a hurry felt like a good way to turn what might have just been a minor issue into a village-wide panic.

At least she could take solace in the fact that Yukari, too, fell behind a bit, as Rin and Komachi plowed on ahead.

This was a less populated area, with only the occasional pedestrian milling about, most of them looking concerned about the commotion. Seeing four youkai hunters sprint past probably wasn't going to help with that either, but she had to make some compromises.

Thankfully, at least, it wasn't a long trip. They rounded a corner, and then another, weaving through an S-curve. Soon, the source of the disruption came into view.

And 'disruption' was an accurate word.

In the street was a haze of blue light, its surface churning like a roiling storm cloud. It rose up almost to the height of the rooftops before curving in on itself, forming a rough dome. Now and then, one of the ripples on its surface would swell forward and lash out, striking at the surroundings like a bolt of lightning. That, at least, didn’t seem to be hurting anything.

The areas it had encompassed weren't quite so lucky. It had enveloped an entire storefront, and the building’s condition seemed to be fluctuating as frequently as the cloud’s shape. The wood quivered as it changed from moment to moment—from pristine, to weathered and rough, to rotten with vines growing over it, then a sharp snap right back to freshly painted. The words on the sign out front changed every few seconds, and the sign itself migrated around the front of the building, showing the marks of half a dozen businesses. It hurt to look at for too long. Fortunately, only the one store was really affected. The only other notable item within was a cart, parked in front of the building… and right at the center of the distortion.

Alice had a suspicion that she knew which of the two was the source of this phenomenon.

The few pedestrians on the street had backed away, giving it plenty of space. The single exception was Kanako, standing a mere ten meters away from it, snapping picture after picture with her camera.

“Is that...?” Alice asked.

“It's like what Aya's flower pot or whatever did, yeah,” Komachi said.

“So, uh,” Rin said, “You all said the pot exploded into a lot of little pots. Are we about to have a street full of carts here?”

While everybody else came to a stop, though, Yukari kept right on going.

“Do you mind telling me what you're doing here, Kanako?”

Kanako didn't look back, lining up another shot. Only once the flash had gone off and she was advancing the film did she say, “I think that we both know the answer.”

“Is that so? For all I know, you caused this. Perhaps I should exterminate you here and now to make an example.”

That finally inspired Kanako to look over at Yukari. “And I also think that we both know that isn't the case.”

“Is that so?”

Kanako turned back to her work. “Don't play coy, Yukari. It doesn't suit you.”

Cautiously, Alice, Komachi, and Rin all approached the pair. Alice suspected that they all felt about equally responsible for making sure that this didn't become a shootout in the middle of the human village. “Yukari,” she said, “I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I don't think that Kanako is the suspicious part of this.”

“I'll be the judge of that.” Still, Yukari turned her attention toward the anomaly, crossing her arms as she scrutinized it. “Regardless... you have your pictures. I'd suggest that you run home and write your article about it.”

“And miss out on the four of you trying to fight this? I'm not sure what kind of fool you take me for, but I'll pass. Really, though...” A flash nearly blinded the four of them, as Kanako raised her camera and snapped a picture with surprising, yet casual, speed. “Don't let me keep you. Do whatever it is you're here for.”

“Oh, but you don't understand,” Yukari said, in a sweet tone that pretty much admitted that she was about to lie, while also insisting that she meant it. “I couldn't have my extermination secrets revealed to the public by a well-meaning reporter. I must ask you to leave as a simple precautionary measure, to preserve the balance of Gensokyo.”

Kanako met her gaze, offering her a cold smile in response. Her wings gave a single annoyed twitch. “Of course. I wouldn't want to endanger the _balance_ , after all.” She turned and took a step away from the thing, then paused. “A word of advice though, Yukari?”

“I'm listening.”

“The tengu have eyes and ears all over Gensokyo. If you don't reveal your secrets yourself, somebody else might just do it for you.”

With a single flap of her wings, Kanako took flight.

Nobody said a word until she was a speck in the sky.

“So I dunno if ya caught that,” Rin said, “but I get the feelin' she definitely knows what's up.”

“Really, now? I hadn't noticed,” Yukari replied, dryly. She stepped forward, closing most of the distance between herself and the anomaly, and poked the tip of her gohei into it. “Dealing with this is the immediate concern, though. Now, please step back and—”

Suddenly, a dozen daggers appeared in midair, slashing forth with enough speed that Yukari barely got out of their way in time. As they hit the wall of energy, their progress grew somewhat less certain. They blurred side to side, jittering uncertainly between positions. One of them warped half a meter backward and fell to the ground. Two more were knocked aside by an apparent gust of wind, even though it was calm outside. One by one, strange circumstances weeded out the daggers. Only three of them made it to their destination. One had been sent into a spin by some unseen force, left tumbling into the air until it bounced to a stop next to the cart. One more stabbed into it and crumbled, apparently rusted completely through. The last one... made it to the cart, but with far less force than it should have had. It barely nicked the wood before toppling over.

All twelve daggers were left laying on the ground, in the same indeterminate condition as the storefront. They shuddered in place as they shifted between states—crumbling, reassembling, melting, growing dull, becoming wicked sharp and covered in blood...

Rin stared forlornly at them. “Aw, man, those were some of my favorites. Figured that'd work.”

“I’m sorry about your knives, but it might be for the best anyway.” Alice said. “If we can keep it intact for long enough to study it…”

“Oh, yes,” Yukari said. “Let’s leave the existential hazard in the middle of the village so that Alice can _study it_. I’m not sure why that didn’t occur to me.”

“If I’m going to fix whatever is going on, I need to know what we’re dealing with first.”

“Then it seems…” Yukari shot Alice a pointed glance. “… that you won’t be the one fixing this. Truly a pity.”

“The looming collapse of reality doesn’t seem like something that can be fixed by the Hakurei shrine maiden throwing ofuda at it. If you—”

“Alright, alright, ladies.” Komachi raised a hand to calm them. “Come on, Kanako’s probably still hiding somewhere taking pictures of you two squabbling for her paper. Let’s chill, okay?”

Alice still had a good four or five arguments lined up in her head, but she dropped the topic with a tense sigh. The group went quiet, every eye turning toward the distortion. Within, the storefront flickered through a quick series of states, settling into a nearly-collapsed condition with splintered timbers leaning against each other. The collapse only underlined how eerily silent the anomaly was—despite the turmoil within, not a single sound seemed to escape from its depths.

This silence was broken by the subtle noise of a sword sliding from its sheath.

Alice glanced over. Sure enough, Komachi had drawn Roukanken, and was now eyeing the anomaly thoughtfully.

“And just what do you think you're going to do with that?” Yukari asked.

Komachi gave the sword a slow spin in her hands and grinned. “Isn't it obvious? I'm going in there.”


	7. Chapter 6

Komachi poked a fingertip into the hazy blue light of the anomaly. Physically, it felt fine. There was a bit of a tingle, but honestly it would be weirder if she didn’t feel anything. Besides, it was making up for it with extra weirdness elsewhere. The section of her finger within the cloud was jittering. A few different versions of it wavered in and out of existence, shifting through each other, merging and splitting like it was being diffracted through churning water.

She pulled it out and gave it a quick inspection. It felt fine. She only had the one fingertip. So, going in there _probably_ wasn't a death sentence.

“Yeah. Here goes nothing.”

“Komachi,” Alice said. “You can't really be planning to—”

Alice's words were cut off, as Komachi took a deep breath and a single long stride forward to thrust her whole body through the barrier.

Around her, the world fractured into a kaleidoscope of possibilities.

Here, a dozen realities were jostling against each other, fighting for dominance. Snow suddenly started pouring down out of the thin air as wind howled in her ears, forcing her to shield her eyes as she moved forward. It vanished, and weeds exploded up from the ground, tall enough to reach her waist. As her immediate surroundings flickered between different states, the world beyond looked even stranger. The sky roiled and churned like a pot of boiling water. The stars and sun shuddered in place, occasionally jolting across the heavens, while clouds billowed in and out of existence. On the street beyond the bubble, people were vanishing and appearing, frozen in seconds-long snapshots and seemingly unable to see her.

She took a single experimental step forward. It felt like dragging her foot through mud. The foot blurred in place, splitting into millions of subtly different positions. When she settled it back onto the ground, they slowly converged into a single foot again. She raised a hand and watched it fracture into thousands of hands, each one flexing its fingers a bit differently. Weird. But, hey, she was already used to being in two places at once, what with the phantom half and all. That just meant she was better-suited for this job than anyone else.

There were only five or so meters between her and the... cart? It had been a cart, right?... at the center of the distortion. 

Now, though, it was just as confused as everything else in sight. Its form twisted and shifted around, changing from one object to another with a speed and fluidity that put Aya's flowerpot to shame. A mass of wood flowed down like wet clay, forming a pile of lumber cut at odd angles. They contracted, forming a cross-section of a tree... then a wooden door, then a rotting log, then a roaring campfire that seemed to be missing most of its tinder…

Komachi grit her teeth as she struggled toward it, fighting against the strange resistance. Sensations ricocheted through her body. Sharp pain exploded in her chest and she hunched over, coughing. She had just enough time to see heavy globs of dark red blood land on her hand before they vanished, disappearing along with the pain. Her clothes crawled around her like a living organism, shifting through fashions, disintegrating, becoming ripped... a few times, she suddenly found herself mid-step, with no memory of the last few seconds, like she'd been jolted straight out of a deep sleep. She really hoped that she wasn't flicking in and out of existence just like everything else.

At least her clothes and Roukanken seemed to be changing along with her, so they were never quite a complete surprise. She slowly lowered the sword from her shoulder and found that... okay, it was now a watering can. And yet, it felt just as natural to hold…

She'd have lots of time for navel-gazing about that later. For now, she just kept her eye on her target as she closed the gap toward the... former cart? Prospective cart? _Probable cart?_ Whatever it was, it didn't seem inclined to stop changing any time soon. Roukanken, too, shifted, on a schedule completely detached from the object's. It became a sheet of beaten metal, then a trowel…

When it turned into a butcher's knife, Komachi took her chances. A bladed weapon was a bladed weapon.

She lifted it overhead, channeling energy into it until the handle vibrated in her hands. Then, she sliced down.

It lacked the trademark speed of her usual attacks. That same pressure resisted it, after all. The blade and her arms blurred into a myriad of different positions, and the further they spread, the harder it seemed to move. She put as much force as she could into it, slashing down in slow motion. The attack that lashed out from the blade, though, was just as fast as ever.

The next few seconds were a blur. The wave of energy sliced through her wooden target. Her body resonated like a ringing bell. The many, many possibilities around her collapsed back into a single here and now. As the last few pockets of lingering realities bubbled away, Komachi was left once more standing in the street, holding her sword and facing down the splintered remains of a cart.

Her whole body felt aching and unclean. Probably, being in a few dozen places at once wasn't good for the ol' constitution. Her vision was still swimming, and her thoughts were jumbled. But, she'd made it out alive, and for a bit there she'd had her doubts.

“A-ah, see. Told you I could handle it,” she announced, before collapsing to her knees.

“Komachi! Are you okay?” Alice hurried up to her side. A couple other sets of footsteps followed after her. “Did you—er, first things first. Do you remember my name?”

Komachi shot her a tired glance. “Name's Alice.”

“And... how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three. I just walked into a weird blue fog, not hit my head, you know.”

“I couldn't be sure. For all we know, you could have been some... Komachi from another timeline or something, I suppose.”

“That doesn't sound like a bad deal right now.” Komachi groaned and rubbed sorely at her forehead. “Being a different version of me, I mean. Feels like somebody just crossed all the wires in my brain.”

“What was it like?” Yukari asked, looking down at her with something between curiosity and veiled concern.

“Remember that time I picked all those mushrooms for dinner, and we thought we were going to die for about two hours?”

“As I recall, you insisted that you _were_ dead for a while. But yes.”

“Like that. But worse.” Still, Komachi had recovered enough to stand. She pushed herself up to standing and gave Roukanken a quick inspection before resheathing it. “What did _you_ see?”

“'bout what you'd expect,” Rin said. “You know, just like the wagon. Suddenly bein' an old lady, keeling over and dying... turned into another person a few times, too. That one girl looked like my type, but Alice wouldn't let me try to drag ya out.”

“Great.” That only made the momentary lapses in consciousness more concerning. But, she'd gotten out in one piece. Or, well, the normal two pieces. That was all that mattered, probably. She turned her attention back to the splintered cart. “So... what now?”

“Ah, right. One moment.” Yukari turned around, eyeing the few groups of pedestrians who were still lingering to watch the proceedings from a distance. “That's all!” She raised her voice, gesturing overhead with her gohei just to get more attention. “A youkai was trying to sow trouble here, but it’s been exterminated. Please go about your business.”

Rin scoffed. “A youkai, huh?”

“If you want to be the one to try explaining everything to them, be my guest.”

“Yeah, but. If Akyuu was right about things fallin' apart, they’re all gonna see this kind of thing sooner or later, right? When Gensokyo starts… tryin’ to split into a zillion Gensokyos or whatever.”

“She's got a point,” Komachi said.

“And what would you have me do? Shout it from the rooftops and make the villagers panic with no recourse? There's nothing they can do about this situation. There's barely even anything that _we_ can do, it would seem. Unless any of you happened to find a solution that you've been keeping to yourselves?”

“You'd know by now,” Alice said.

“Hey, you just saw, right? If any problems crop up, I can slice 'em with my sword.” Komachi paused for laughter that didn't come. “… seriously though, I don't have anything.”

“Might have to accept that we ain't gonna find a way to fix this,” Rin said.

“We've got to keep looking. If everything ends up like...” Komachi gestured toward the spot where the cloud had been hanging, “ _that_ , I don't think we stand much chance. And it's not like we can evacuate Gensokyo.”

“Don't figure I'd fit in too good in the outside world, nope.”

“We may not have a choice,” Alice said. “We only have so many alternatives. Moving out all of the villagers would take a week, though… and that’s assuming we could even convince them.”

“Yeah…” With a deep sigh, Komachi glanced back to the shattered remains of the cart. “Not like anybody’s going to jump at the chance to leave Gensokyo. … well, except maybe me. If feeling like that for the rest of my life’s the alternative, I’ll take my chances outside. At least I’d have the right number of arms out there.”

“So we’ve just gotta dunk everyone in the blue stuff first so they’ll take it serious,” Rin said. “Got it.”

“Hmm.”

Yukari's 'hmm' was a pointed kind of 'hmm.' The sort that was more of an announcement than a real sound of reflection. The kind of ‘hmm’ that made the conversation taper off, as every eye turned toward her.

“Hmm. Yes, I think that will do. Komachi, Alice, thank you for your help. You just gave me an idea. Now...” Yukari dipped an only-slightly-mocking curtsy toward the other three. “If you ladies will excuse me, I'm off to save Gensokyo.”

* * *

Nobody got into the Hieda manor without permission. At least, nobody human. Even though there weren't guards posted at most times, the sheer amount of servants made sneaking in impossible. So, when Mokou heard the footprints approaching her door, she'd given permission for them to be there. That still didn't mean that she was _happy_ when Yukari strode into the room, right past a slightly bewildered servant.

“I need you to tell a lie for me,” Yukari said.

Mokou sighed. She really could have turned Yukari away. But, being the head of the Hieda family meant making sacrifices from time to time. Occasionally, these sacrifices got so dire as willingly listen to the Hakurei shrine maiden's manipulative plots. She dipped her pen back into its inkwell and sat her work aside for the moment. She still left Yukari waiting a few more seconds before saying, “I'll hear you out.”

If Yukari noticed the cold reception, she certainly didn't show it.. “I need to convince most of Gensokyo of a very important historic event. Obviously this would be a bit easier if I had the support, for example, of the human village's most powerful family. Having Akyuu’s cooperation will be important too, of course.”

“That would really depend on the fake event in question, wouldn’t it?”

“This one.” Yukari held out a folded slip of paper.

Mokou took it, and unfolded it with the sort of disdain and reluctance that was usually reserved for used diapers.

It was a quickly-jotted mockup of a flyer, on paper that looked like a reused food wrapper. In Yukari's hurried, admittedly still quite good, handwriting, it read:

#### JOINT HAKUREI/MORIYA SHRINE FESTIVAL

**CELEBRATING A ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME EVENT**  
As agreed upon at the founding of the Great Hakurei Barrier, on this day the barrier shall be opened for any resident of Gensokyo who wishes to leave Gensokyo for the outside world. Only those who feel themselves capable of making a new life in an unfamiliar land should consider this, but all who apply will be accepted without discrimination. Interested parties should make their desire known to the Hakurei shrine maiden before sunset on the day of the event. To mark this occasion, festivities and celebrations will take place throughout the evening, culminating in...

Mokou had seen enough. “You want me to convince them that it's been the plan to let people leave all along, huh?”

“Something like that. I'll admit, I'm not happy with the justification. If there were an astronomical event to tie it to, or anything of that sort... but no. If anybody asks, we can just say that the date was chosen for being four generations removed from the creation of the barrier. There are no longer any humans who remember it, and even most of the grandchildren of those who founded the barrier have passed on... something like that.”

“And you got the Moriya shrine to agree to this?”

“Of course not. But if I ask after the flyers are printed up, they won't have much choice, now will they? And for this to work, I’m going to need to spread the word as far as possible. Everybody in Gensokyo needs to know it’s happening. The bigger the festival is, the more the news will spread, and the more likely it is to succeed.”

“Uh-huh. And I'm sure the fact that you're roping the Moriya shrine into a festival to celebrate the _Hakurei_ barrier isn't some kind of attack on them.”

“I simply have no idea what you mean,” Yukari said sweetly.

“Right.” Mokou tossed the paper back across the desk. “And how is this supposed to fix everything?”

“Consider this: Right now, the only ones who know that Gensokyo's entire existence is in danger are you, me, Akyuu, Rin, Alice, Hatate, and Komachi. And, presumably, whoever decided to break reality in the first place.”

“If they even knew what they were doing. It could’ve just been an accident for all we know.”

“I suspect that’s the case, actually. Whoever did this apparently had the power to manipulate the past. If they wanted Gensokyo gone, or to rule its ruined ashes, or anything like that, they had ample opportunity. If they wanted to do all of this just to steal somebody’s identity or something, it doesn't do them any good if Gensokyo starts falling apart a week later. So, we have to assume that it was unintentional.”

Mokou leaned back on her cushion, crossing her arms and scrutinizing Yukari across her desk. Admittedly, she still didn't like gambling on trying to guess what was going through the culprit’s head. Particularly if that culprit was from some other Gensokyo, pre-rewrite, with different circumstances. But... “Assume all of your guesses are right. Plenty of youkai will still know it's a lie. The barrier wasn't that long ago, in youkai terms.”

“That’s the one part we don’t have any control over,” Yukari admitted. “It wasn’t. But, things have been calm. If this was a power play by some faction, they don’t seem to be doing much with the opportunity. I have to assume that it wasn’t. I also assume that very few lesser youkai were privy to the details of the barrier's creation. So while they might have been alive during it, they'd be fooled as well as anybody else. For those youkai who do know that this is a lie… I'm sure that they'll have the discretion to stay quiet about it.”

“Or you'll cave their skulls in.”

“You said it, not me.”

“So, what. You spread the word about this, the person hears about it, and they show up for their chance to get out of Gensokyo before things get really bad?”

“More or less, yes. Whatever they were planning, if Gensokyo is going to explode like that pot did, I have to assume that they don’t want to be here for it. If they didn’t even mean to do this, they’re probably panicking too. It’s only natural to try to escape. And if we give them a way out, and make it obvious enough that they don’t think they’ll be too conspicuous by going for it…”

“It'd make a pretty good lure for them, yeah.” It almost pained Mokou to agree with Yukari. She'd needed to master skills like subterfuge over her centuries of life. That didn't mean that she _liked_ it, though. Much better to just tackle a problem head-on and get things sorted out.

Too bad that in this case, the problem was intangible and the culprit was well-hidden. Yukari hadn't said as much, but she still had a point—if they wanted to catch whoever was behind this, they'd need to coax them into revealing themselves. Hoping that they could find the source of a Gensokyo-wide event by deduction alone wasn't going to get them anywhere.

“… fine. I'll have a word with Akyuu, too. As far as the human village is concerned, this has been planned for over a century and nobody's talked about it because everyone who was alive when it was set up is long dead. Happy?”

“I could be happier. Do you happen to have any snacks on hand?”

“No. And are you really convinced this will work?”

“Surety is for fools. This is the path that's open to us, so we must walk it.”

“That’s a pretty fancy way of saying 'we've got fuck-all for alternatives.'”

Still, despite her resistance, Mokou did feel better now that there was _something_ she could do to address the issue. She was an impatient person. She was also slender, frail, and got exhausted by a walk halfway across the village. They weren't a good combination, when she was faced with the sort of crisis that usually needed somebody to run in busting youkai skulls.

“Well, if we're agreed on the plan...” Yukari took the paper back, folding it back up and tucking it neatly away. “I'm sure that it wouldn't be too much trouble for the Hieda family to fund printing the flyers?”

“Flyers aren't that much. Pretty sure you can afford them.”

“Ah, but a job this important calls for only the best. I might need some custom plates engraved. The more eye-catching the flyers are, the better the chance of this working, after all. The future of Gensokyo is on the line, my dear Mokou. This is no time to be stingy.”

“Doesn't seem to be stopping you, though. … I'll send somebody by Suzunaan to let him know that you're coming. And if you do need to hire _artists_ or something...” Mokou internally winced. She knew that she'd probably end up regretting what she was going to say next, but this was still for the good of Gensokyo. “… tell them to put it on the Hieda family's tab. Most of them should be okay with that.”

“Wonderful. I might not get to Suzunaan today, but tell him that he can expect me by this time tomorrow at the latest.”

“What, have plans bigger than saving the world?”

“Hmm? I'd thought it would be obvious. I need to go inform the Moriya shrine that we'll be holding a festival.”

* * *

“What about Trivial Pursuit?” Momiji asked. “We haven't played that in a while.”

“Okay, so, number one, Trivial Pursuit's not all that interesting to begin with,” Hatate said, without looking up. “Two, Trivial Pursuit sucks with you two, 'cuz you don't know any pop culture from the last century, and also you were around for all the historic stuff, which is totally cheating.”

“I know some pop culture,” Momiji said, sounding only the slightest bit offended.

“Uh-huh.” Hatate finally paused her game and looked up. “So, like... which one's Mario and which one's Luigi?”

Momiji frowned. “… which what?”

“Yeah, exactly.” Hatate unpaused and continued playing.

Evenings around the shrine were like this a lot. At least, _now_ they were. It had taken a year and a half to get the fusion reactor running after arriving in Gensokyo, and a few months more to get electricity run up to the shrine. That had been a long time to spend missing modern conveniences like electric fans and microwaves, let alone video games. She had a lot of catching up to do. She was barely halfway through the big backlog she'd brought with her.

Dealing with people wasn't Hatate's strong point. If there was a tactful way to tell her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandma that Dynasty Warriors was more interesting than board game night, she hadn't found it yet.

For now, though, Momiji seemed to take the hint. “Maybe tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah, maybe. Think dinner should be done in an hour or so anyway, right?”

“It's Aya's turn to cook tonight. You'd have to ask her.”

Momiji was obviously trying to keep her tone neutral, but Hatate knew simmering resentment when she heard it. At least, she did when it was coming from Momiji. Momiji could simmer pretty darn hard. Reluctantly, she paused her game again and looked up. “You two are fighting again, huh?”

“We aren't _fighting_. If we had an actual fight, I promise that you'd—”

“Okay, okay! You're having a 'disagreement' or whatever, right?”

“… she still thinks that the flower pot thing would have worked out if I'd supported it, yes.”

“Like, how? Did she think we were gonna get people to worship a pile of pottery?”

“That's a very good question. Maybe you should ask her.”

“Eh, no thanks. I _really_ don't wanna get her started again. You two have fun with that.”

Momiji nodded, seeming satisfied with cross-generational bonding over being annoyed at Aya. She started to make her way out of the room... just in time for a door to fly open and almost smack her in the face. It was the small side door that opened right into the shrine's living quarters from outside, rather than requiring somebody to walk through all of the more spiritually-inclined rooms.

Yukari stepped through, looking around the room thoughtfully. “Hmm. I haven't been in here in years. You really did decide that the shrine should be as strange as its shrine maiden, didn't you?”

Momiji shot her a look of annoyance, but didn't rise to the bait. “You could have knocked.”

“Yes. I could have,” Yukari said, and stepped past her. “Hatate, I have an important proposal for you, but we should probably discuss it in private.”

Hatate tried to pretend to be extra-interested in her game. The last thing she wanted was to have a long conversation with Yukari right now. Still, after a few seconds, it became obvious that she wasn't going to be able to ignore the topic outright. “Anything you wanna tell me, Lady Momiji can hear too.”

“It's about the _private matters_ we discussed the other night.”

“Oh,” Momiji said, “the incident with Gensokyo being remade?”

Yukari shot Hatate an accusatory glance.

Hatate sighed and paused her game. Again. A girl couldn't get anything done around here. “Hey, Lady Aya was at ground zero for the whole thing with the flower pot, remember? I had to tell them, or it'd just be weird.”

“Yes, we wouldn't want anything to be _weird_ ,” Yukari agreed.

“Lay off. Besides, Lady Momiji's all tactful n' stuff. Nobody'll hear about it from her, promise.”

“And Aya?”

“… she'll at least wait until she can turn a profit on telling people?”

“I suppose that's almost like a secret. It isn't like anybody will willingly pay the prices that Aya wants.”

Momiji softly cleared her throat. “Well, I'll still leave you be if you two need to talk about it. Would you girls like any snacks?”

“Nah, thanks,” Hatate said. “We're fine, I think.”

“I could bring up some soda from the cellar. We do have—”

“We’re fine, Lady Momiji.” Hatate looked up and forced a smile. “I’ll see you at dinner, alright?”

This time, Momiji took the hint. “Of course. I'll let you get to work. I'm sure there's a lot to talk about.”

Finally, she was gone.

“Shouldn't it usually be the shrine maiden offering food to the goddesses?” Yukari said, as she approached the couch. “Rather than the other way around.”

“Yeah, well, most shrine maidens aren't their goddess's descendant. She was incorporeal n' stuff until we came here, so now she feels like she has to make up for lost time and everything. All 'hey, Hatate, have you ever played checkers?'” Reluctantly, Hatate lowered her feet from the couch, sitting upright to make room for Yukari. “It’s fine and all. She’s kinda old-fashioned, but she, like… she gets me in the ways that matter, I guess. It could be way worse, right?”

“As far as the labors asked of us by the gods go, yes, playing checkers rates low on the list, I would think.”

“So what's this about, anyway?”

“We're going to hold a festival together.”

Hatate glanced up to study Yukari's expression. There wasn't the slightest indication that this had been intended as a joke. She could see that this wasn't going to be one of those conversations she could halfass between boss fights or something. Oh well. She was barely a minute into this stage, thanks to all the interruptions. She could afford to lose the progress.

After shutting everything off, Hatate finally directed her full attention toward Yukari. “Why would I wanna run a festival with you? Did you forget we're rivals and everything?”

“Well, for one thing, because I've already ordered a few hundred flyers to announce that this will be a _joint_ festival.”

“Not my problem if you’re dumb enough to shell out for a bunch of flyers before you actually planned stuff.”

“Oh, no, you don't understand. Mokou is having them printed, as a rush order straight from her. I'm sure that the Hieda family's servants will be hanging them up by this time tomorrow.”

Hatate barely resisted the urge to snatch her gohei up from the coffee table and smack Yukari across the face with it. “What the heck made you think you could do that?!”

“It will convince the culprit behind everything that's happened to turn themselves in to us. But, to do so, it needs to be big. So big that no youkai can go without hearing about it, no matter how remote they are. If I didn't think that it would lead to a disaster and make it harder to keep a secret, I probably would have invited the Buddhists too.”

“'Invite' is a pretty funny way to say 'extorted into helping,' y’know.”

“Well, I suppose I can't force you. If you were to back out, it would hurt your shrine's reputation, but—”

“And _that's_ just a fancy way of saying that, yeah, you're forcing us.” Hatate sighed, but this could be worse. They'd been planning a festival to enshrine the glowing pot anyway. They hadn't even had time to cancel all of their arrangements yet. And at least setting up a festival would give her something productive to do. It felt like everyone else was out there playing Sherlock, but she didn’t really have the finesse for sort of thing. She was much better at the kind of incidents that could be resolved by charging at the enemy while chucking laser wolves. She was good at the laser wolves thing. “… but fine. Making a festival that big of a deal is gonna be pretty hard, though. Lady Aya doesn't really hold back to begin with.”

“Well, having the Hieda household provide funding should help. We can afford to go all-out with some things.”

“Whoa, she agreed to foot the bill for the whole thing?”

“Of course not. But when merchants start coming to her with tabs that she didn’t approve, what’s she going to do, tell them to collect from me instead? Everybody in the village knows they’d be lucky to get ten yen.”

“Have you ever, like, met somebody you didn’t try to piss off within the first week or so? Just kinda curious.”

“I'll have you know that I'm intensely lovable. Now, please focus on the topic at hand: how can we make this the biggest, most extravagant festival that Gensokyo has ever seen?”

“Ehhh...” Hatate slumped back in her seat, staring up at the ceiling as she considered the question. “We’ve still got lots of fireworks and stuff we were going to use for our festival, so there's that.”

“It's a good start, but we need bigger. Something that people haven't seen before. Don't you have any outside world... _devices_ for this sort of thing?”

“Hey, I don't hear you offering anything!” Hatate huffed, but considered the question. “There's, like, rides at some festivals and stuff in the outside. Maybe we could get the kappa to make some if I described them.”

“'Rides.'”

“I said what I meant! Ferris wheels, roller coasters! That kinda thing!”

Yukari only continued giving her a blank stare, and Hatate sighed. How to put this into terms that a weirdo that was basically stuck in the 1800s would understand... “Okay, like, imagine a cart, right? Like, a horse cart.”

“Yes, I know what a cart is. What about it?”

“So now imagine riding it down, I dunno, a really big hill, and then going around lots of curves and stuff real fast.”

“Oh, an automobile. You could have just said that much.”

“No, it's on a track too. So it's just got one way it can go, and there's no chance of it wrecking and stuff.”

“A train, then?”

“No! It's like!” Frustrated, Hatate gestured vaguely in the air. “Okay, _yes_ , it's like a train, but a super-fast train!”

“And where does it take you?”

“It takes you back to where ya started, because it's for fun! Just, trust me on this, okay? I'll see if the kappa can make one, I dunno. What do _you_ have to offer, anyway?”

“If I can find Suika, I'd like to ask her if she can acquire enough sake for the entire festival. Perhaps make up a story about it being sacred to convince people that it's a draw all by itself.”

“Lying is just kinda your first plan for everything, huh? Well, I mean. I can’t get into her whole weird… hermit… dimension… thing, but we can probably get ahold of her? We’re, like, basically neighbors.”

“Good. I might in fact have to find something that I can trade to her, because she doesn’t seem likely to accept a line of credit from the Hieda family as payment. Let me worry about that, though.”

“I mean, we could just tell her it's to save Gensokyo. Bet she'd be cool with that.”

“Unlike the rest of you, apparently, I'm actually trying not to spread that knowledge around too much. This plan relies on it staying secret.”

“Whatever. So anyway, what else?”

“Hmm... I suppose that trying to introduce floats at this point would be a lost cause. We will need stands, of course. Maybe I'll make some sort of contest to encourage the youkai to bring their most interesting goods. Also ads in the tengu papers, but I can arrange for those. And...” Yukari trailed off, and only reluctantly finished, “If your goddesses were to make an appearance, I suppose that would only be fair.”

“Damn right, it would. What about yours? They’ve gotta have enough juice for that much, right?”

“Lady Chen probably isn’t a good idea around that many villagers. Lady Ran… I’ll see if she feels up to physically manifesting, at least.”

“Sure. So, like... that's a pretty solid start, right? Besides, it isn't like people will know it's a huge festival until it happens. If you want everyone to hear about it, the advertising's way more important than the festival itself.”

“Of course.” Yukari held up her folded flyer, giving it a little shake. “Just leave that to me.”


	8. Interlude #1: Akyuu

Akyuu’s back was to most of the students as she lectured, strolling down the aisle between desks. She could still sense their pent-up energy. The fidgeting, tapping feet, and whispered conversations were a constant undertone now. When she stole the occasional glance at papers in passing, she spotted as many doodles as legitimate notes.

“… and in the end, the rebellion was a failure. Taira’s severed head was taken across the country as proof of his death, and publicly displayed in Heian-kyo for months.” She noted that the fidgeting quieted down a bit with that. The morbid interests of children were nothing if not predictable. “Fujiwara’s uprising continued for over a year, before being defeated by a small army dispatched from the capital for the express purpose. Ono no Yoshifuru distinguished himself in the battle, and earned a low-ranking position attached to the court. He is rarely remembered these days, while you may know his younger brother as the man on the willow suit in hanafuda.”

Okay, that factoid had proven less effective at quelling the fidgeting. She was going to have to accept that she wasn’t going to hold their attention for much longer. “With that, I think we’ll end the lesson for today a bit early. Third-year students, remember that you have an assignment due tomorrow—” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the rustle of the children already rising from their seats. “—and everybody else, please take some time tonight to review the material so far. Tomorrow we’ll start on the rise of Fujiwara no Michinaga, and I promise that you’ll be confused if you still don’t remember the positions of the clans going in.”

The clamor was growing too loud to talk over. Akyuu gave up on trying to get any other productive comments in. She moved to the front of the room and waited, watching the children gather their things and leave. Several were polite enough to thank her or bid her a good afternoon on the way out. Most of the rest just crowded around the doorway, elbowing each other in their eagerness to get an extra few seconds of freedom.

And then they were gone, leaving behind a silence that was deafening by comparison. She knew from experience that it would take them a while to spread out from the schoolhouse, though. Best to linger a bit and give them some time. So, she walked down the aisles, straightening the desks. She picked up a few pieces of rubbish that had been left on the floor and threw them away. Toward the back of the room, there was a puddle of… well, she’d learned not to think too hard about the composition of mysterious puddles, in this line of work. When you spent this much time around young children, it was a defense mechanism. She swabbed it up with a cloth, and went upstairs to her private quarters to wash her hands for good measure.

To a part of her, this all still had an incredible novelty. Even across ten lifetimes, Hieda no Akyuu—or Aya, or Anana, or Amu, or… so on—had never been responsible for cleaning up her own messes. Even Are had servants for most of her life, from what little that Akyuu could remember. She vaguely remembered what dying felt like. She had known figures who were now spoken about as myths. She’d been attacked by youkai seven times across her many lives, and experienced dozens of rare and privileged events of the sort that a normal human might only see once or twice in a lifetime.

And despite all of that, life as Akyuu Kamishirasawa was still managing to surprise her with new experiences. Across her many lives, the Child of Miare had never been asked to wipe up puddles of unknown fluids.

By the time she headed back downstairs, the clamor outside had quieted down. The children had all headed home, or to wherever they were spending the rest of the day. After giving them another minute or so just to be sure, she stepped outside, locked up the building, and headed out.

This was the freeing part about being a mere schoolteacher. Akyuu Kamishirasawa could just… leave. There were no household affairs needing her attention every few hours. No servants needed to be informed about her plans so they could time her dinner. No nobles were going to whisper behind her back if she walked through a part of the village that they considered anything but immaculately reputable. The only possible repercussion to going for a walk was that she might get her outfit dirty, or have an awkward conversation with some student’s parent.

It wasn’t the only advantage that this Akyuu had, though.

After a few minutes to limber up, she slowly picked up the pace until she was traveling down the street at a brisk jog. The mid-afternoon crowds were thin enough that she didn’t have many obstacles to consider. Her breathing sped up and her pulse started thudding in the back of her head, but those were only the signs of her body rising to the challenge. Hieda no Akyuu would have collapsed to the ground after ten seconds, wheezing for air and dizzy. Odds were that she would have been bedridden for the next day and a half. But she, now, could do this for entire minutes without a break.

She resisted the urge to push herself to go faster. Already, people were shooting her some quizzical glances. But again: nobody cared if the village teacher was a bit eccentric. As an unmarried, part-youkai woman in her thirties, it was practically expected of her. It was so _freeing_. If she’d really wanted to, she could have gotten drunk and picked a fight with whoever was annoying her at the moment, and within a week, ninety-five percent of the village would have already forgotten about it.

It was almost enough to convince her to reject her inheritance in her next incarnation. Almost.

She turned down one of the village’s busiest boulevards, waving to familiar faces as she passed. Here, the foot traffic was thicker, with a few carts peppered here and there. She could have taken it as an excuse to slow down, but she didn’t. She weaved between the moving obstacles, finding herself more and more delighted at the simple ability to even do so. In the thicker traffic, nobody paid much attention to the strange, jogging schoolteacher.

This wasn’t just a trip to enjoy her health, though, although that was definitely part of the appeal. The street she was on was so busy because it was the main route in and out of the village. Soon, she was beyond the wall, and the houses were quickly growing more sparse.

She slowed down to a walking pace. No sense in running the entire distance. It was a nice day. Taking her time would give her a much-needed chance to gather her thoughts, anyway.

It wasn’t a long walk. Within ten minutes or so, her destination was coming into view. Even looking at it made her second-guess herself. But she wanted to be here. She hesitated outside for a few seconds, doubting whether she should go through with this. In the end, the answer was yes. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

She knew what she was going to find within. That didn’t stop it from smashing into her heart like a hammer.

The Child of Miare had many advantages. Their memory was perfect and their mind was sharp. They were born into luxury, and revered by even their parents most of the time. They held knowledge of bygone eras. To an outside observer, it was a blessed, carefree life.

But, the Child of Miare was sickly. In her nine deaths so far, only Ayo, Anana, and Are herself had lived past thirty. Her record was thirty-two. And thus, the sight in front of her was one that she—or the part of her that was Hieda no Akyuu, at least—had never dared to think that she might see: Kosuzu, fifteen years older than she was in the other Gensokyo. Kosuzu in her mid-thirties.

“Oh, good afternoon, Miss Kamishirasawa. Welcome to Kourindou!” said Kosuzu Morichika, looking up from the book she’d been reading. “… er, is everything okay?”

“It… it is, yes.”

Akyuu finally remembered to close the door behind herself. She approached the counter, stealing a glance at the book. Or, not a book, actually. A manual. The owner’s manual, to something called a ‘WM-101 Sony Walkman.’

She’d seen the other Kourindou, the one run by Rinnosuke, a few times. In a lot of ways, the two stores were the same. The structure was similar, and neither proprietor had all that much control over their merchandise acquisition. But the similarities stopped there. In this Kourindou, the goods had all been cleaned, and repaired where possible. Ones that Kosuzu found particularly interesting were in places of prominence around the show floor. The counter held a few jars of common small components—screws, glass bulbs, and some sort of little metal cylinder—with meticulously handwritten signs giving instructions on how to choose the correct one. Behind the counter was an entire shelf of owner’s manuals and repair guides. Rinnosuke was a collector. Kosuzu was an _enthusiast._

“Can I help you find anything, or, um…?”

Kosuzu’s voice snapped Akyuu out of it, and she realized that she was smiling. It was a good thing that she didn’t have to live up to the standards of the head of the Hieda family, because her behavior probably looked ridiculous right now.

“I actually just wanted to stop in and see you,” she answered, truthfully. “Just call it a social visit. What are you working on right now, if I could ask?”

“Oh, well, I can show you if you want. Hold on, one second.”

Soon, Kosuzu was giving her an impassioned description of the workings of the device she’d been reading about, complete with opening it up so she could point out individual components by tapping them with the tip of the screwdriver. She reassembled it and demonstrated how it could be made to play music, like a much more portable version of the other Akyuu’s phonograph. That other part of Akyuu recognized all of this, too. It was the same enthusiasm that Kosuzu had always shown while gushing about youma books. The same Kosuzu, tempered with a few more years of wisdom and blessed with merchandise that was much less likely to go horribly wrong if she made a mistake.

Soon, she’d almost forgotten why she’d come here. The rambling lecture helped to calm her nerves, and once Kosuzu was going, she barely needed any prompting. It was obvious that she didn’t get many chances to indulge herself in talking about these things. Her discourse on the Walkman naturally led her to another device, and another one after that. Akyuu had intended this to be a short visit, but it grew dark outside in what felt like an unreasonably short amount of time.

Kosuzu seemed to notice it, too. As she finished that third explanation, she trailed off, giving a nervous laugh. “Sorry, I guess I probably said a lot more than you wanted to know. I just find this stuff really interesting!”

Akyuu shook her head with a smile. “It was informative, even if I didn’t understand some parts. Thank you.”

“Well, good! But, still… I’m sure you didn’t plan to spend all evening sitting out here listening to me talk, right?”

“I didn’t plan on it, but I enjoyed it, I promise. And I’d be happy to do it again sometime. On that same note...” Akyuu trailed off, uncertain. Neither version of her, after all, had any experience with what she needed to do next. She was heading into completely unknown territory. “… it must get lonely this far out from the village, doesn’t it? How would you like to join me for dinner later this week?”


	9. Chapter 7

Hatate yawned and, for about the fifteenth time this morning, cursed the fact that she was awake.

Setting up a festival took a lot of work. Setting up the biggest festival that Gensokyo had ever seen, it turned out, took lots and _lots_ of work.

Doing that in about four days meant forgoing a lot of sleep, having some of her meals during planning sessions, doing very little with her spare time, and ending up with a notebook filled with half-legible reminders that said things like like _'TUESDAY: printing?? talk to fairies. get tacks or smth.'_

She had, in fact, had things printed, talked to fairies, and gotten her hands on a big supply of tacks. The evidence was all around her. Practically every path in Gensokyo was surrounded by flyers now. With the Hieda family footing the bill, Yukari had commissioned a few thousand of the damn things, and the only way to hang them all up was to get creative.

It hadn't been too hard to convince a bunch of fairies to hang the flyers in exchange for some payment. The hard part was getting them to hang the flyers right-side up. With the text facing outward. With two to four tacks apiece. Around eye level. Near paths. One per tree.

All of these were the kinds of things that, she had discovered, needed to be painstakingly explained when you were hiring fairies. She was pretty sure that at least one of them had still gotten the bright idea to just dump her flyers in the river and collect the payment, but... whatever. Hatate wasn't even sure where else they’d find a pristine tree at this point. Maybe a mermaid would see them.

She was at the bottom of the hill leading up to the Hakurei shrine and, regrettably, their festival grounds. Getting people to come all the way up near the peak of Youkai mountain en masse would present some difficulties, she'd had to admit. Already, the path was pretty busy with vendors and performers coming in to set up before the crowds arrived. She could just barely make out the torii past the trees, and...

And... it took her a few seconds to realize why the skyline didn't look right. After an exasperated sigh, Hatate took off running uphill.

The few other pedestrians she passed shot her concerned looks, but there was no time to worry about that. There were more pressing matters at hand. Matters that only she could attend to. As she approached the shrine, her conviction that something was amiss only grew more and more firm. There was a forest of stalls being erected along the path onto the shrine grounds, a stage near the back, a few larger tents for assorted purposes…

And there in the middle, a miniature carnival setup. There was a merry-go-round, complete with some kappa's attempt at half a dozen horse sculptures. There was one of those little games where you tried to hit a target hard enough with a hammer, because that had been easy enough to describe to the kappa, so why not. And there was...

Well, in her drawings, it was a ferris wheel. She had expected to see it poking above the trees from a distance.

It was _actually_... kinda like a ferris wheel, still. Except, most ferris wheels were a lot more vertical. This one was laying parallel to the ground, with the cars sitting on top of the wheel itself. Kappa were still crawling all over it, putting finishing touches on the thing.

She walked straight toward the nearest group of them, and forced herself to wait until she was within conversation distance to ask, “What the heck did you do?!”

One of the kappa looked up from her work, shooting her an annoyed look in response. “What's that supposed to mean, lady?!”

“I thought it'd be kind of obvious! This!” Hatate gestured at the wheel. “It's all wrong!”

“It's exactly how it's supposed to be! Buzz off!”

“I'm the one who told you guys about it!”

“Yeah, but I'm building it! That'd mean I know better!”

“Whoa, whoa, don't need to go pickin' any fights!” The voice came from the far end of the wheel, and was soon followed by the hurried sounds of somebody dropping their work and scrambling up on top of it. Mamizou Kawashiro came into view, still holding a wrench, and shot the other kappa a chastising look. “This here's a customer, y'know.”

The kappa huffed. “She started it.”

“Yeah, and I reckon she'd finish it if you kept going like that, too.” Mamizou walked across the wheel, stepping from strut to strut, until she was in front of Hatate. Even standing a meter up on the wheel, there wasn't much of a height difference. “What's this about us buildin' it wrong?”

“This!” Hatate waved her arms in an exasperated gesture toward the thing. “It's, like, sideways!”

Mamizou put her hands on her hips and looked back at it. “Which bit?”

“All of it!”

“Eh? Supposed to go up and down, is it?”

“Yes!”

“Hmm...” Mamizou dipped her hand into a pocket and pulled out a paper, which Hatate readily recognized as the quick illustration that she'd provided them. Peering over it, she gave a thoughtful nod. “Think I can see it. That'd explain the lack of supports in your picture. Me and the girls reckoned you'd drew it wrong, since there was no way humans would make something that tall.”

“Being tall is the point!” Hatate looked out over the thing and tried to think of ways it might be saved. Not much to do at this point, though. It would need major restructuring to ever move vertically. Maybe if they had a couple of days, but not now, two or three hours before the festival was supposed to start. On the other hand... She sighed. “Whatever. I mean, it still spins around, right? That still probably seems pretty cool if you're some fantasy weirdo who's never seen a car before.”

“Good t'hear. Tell you what, we'll knock a third off the price for that one to make it up to you.”

The deal had the Moriya shrine paying the kappa _and_ the kappa pocketing any profit from the ride tickets. Hatate was pretty sure that even with the discount, they were making out like bandits. Little, nerdy bandits who smelled slightly like stagnant pond water. But she'd take what she could get. “Fine. What about the merry-go-round? Is that one all good n' stuff?”

“You don't need to worry your pretty little head about that one, at least. Got all the animals you asked for, turns as smooth as a dream. Well. Er. Except.”

“Except...?”

“Riggin' it up to play music proved a mite difficult. Getting the music, that is. Had to take what we could get.”

Hatate could already feel dread rising within her. “What songs does it play?”

“Hmm, let's see here...” Mamizou flipped the paper over and shifted it around to look at a few notes in her own handwriting. “Had to get our hands on some of them shiny discs. Those little tape gadgets you gave us seem a lot easier to deal with, but we couldn't get 'em working in time. So we've got, let's see... one of 'em just says 'QUEEN GREATEST HITS' on the front, but none of them fellows look like a queen to me. Got another one with a name that's all foreign. I can't read it, but figured you might be able to?”

Mamizou held the paper out. It took a moment for Hatate to decipher her handwriting, and a second, dread-filled, moment for her to figure out what it meant. “Titanic,” she read. “Music From The Motion Picture.”

“That so? I could figure out the 'motion,' at least. Figured that sounded appropriate, with it being for a ride that moves. And, finally, got one 'Deep River' by a Hikaru Utada.”

“That's the one with the Kingdom Hearts thing, isn't it,” Hatate said, flatly. She didn’t have the heart to make it sound like a question.

“Couldn’t tell you. Is that good or bad?”

“It’s… it’s whatever. Gonna be the best keyblade-and-crashing-boats experience Gensokyo's ever seen, I bet.”

“Can't pretend I've got any idea what that means, but you don't sound all too happy.”

“It's gonna sound dumb as heck to me, but I guess no one else will mind.” Hatate sighed, suppressing her urge to collapse and take a nap then and there.

* * *

“How 'bout this one? Ya want I should just toss it in with the rest?”

Alice was arranging items beneath the counter when Rin asked the question. She peeked up, looking out at the object in question. Rin was holding a length of twine wound through dried mushroom caps, each the size of her hand.

“… ah. I forgot to arrange for anywhere to put that. There's a hammer in the cart, and there should be some nails around. You can hang it from a nail somewhere.”

“Don'tcha figure it's gonna scare everyone when they walk by an' see all these weird plants and crystals all over?”

“Don't expect me to believe that you find it creepy.”

“I mean, not me, obviously. I think it's pretty wicked. But, y'know. Regular folks.”

“Think of them as advertising. If I looked completely normal, nobody would ever believe that I was a witch.”

Except...

Now Alice _was_ a bit concerned. She stood up and walked around the counter, traveling a few meters away before she turned around for a look.

The festival stall she'd set up was as professional as she'd been able to make on such short notice. It was painted a cheery blue-and-white. The 'KIRISAME MAGIC SHOP' sign above it was tidy and punctilious. She'd lit the interior with a few candles, so that nobody could think she looked dark and gloomy in there. If it weren't for the fact that the countertop was halfway covered with enchanted charms and jars of herbs, a person could have mistaken it for a bakery or something.

Although she supposed that if anybody did want her to bake something, she could probably take a shot at it. She was a heat magician, after all.

“Lookin' good?” Rin called back to her, digging through the contents of the cart.

“It's coming along nicely. I don't think a few dried mushrooms will scare anybody off who wasn't already upset by the word 'magic.'”

“Just what're ya fixin' to sell, anyway? Don't think anyone's gonna buy this stuff off of ya.”

“There's a signboard with the prices at the bottom of the cart. Mostly charms and a few potions that I can make on demand. Although if anybody wants to contract me for work later, I'm not going to say no.”

“Dunno who's gonna be lookin' for witch stuff at a festival, but I'm into it.” After finding the hammer and a nail to go with it, Rin walked back over to the stall. She eyed it for a few seconds before picking what was apparently the most aesthetically sound spot to hang the mushrooms, then drove the nail partly in. After hanging the mushrooms from it, she gave a satisfied nod… and then lingered there. “So. Uh.”

Alice looked up from her own review of the cart's contents. “So?”

Rin obviously had something to say, but she sort of squirmed in place, reluctant. That wasn't like her at all. Alice was much more accustomed to her blurting out the first thought that came into her head, regardless of its tact or relevance to the situation at hand. She set the hammer aside, then flopped down, laying across the countertop. “… Yukari really thinks this'll fix the whole thing, huh?”

“An important step in doing so, at least.”

“Did she tell ya how?”

“Does Yukari ever tell anybody anything?”

“Alright, that’s fair. I’m just thinkin’… today might be the day, huh?”

“I'd be surprised if it's that easy, but... I suppose today might be the day, yes.” Alice could see where this was going. Rin, as always, was an open book. Right now, she was a pretty gloomy sort of open book. Alice walked back over to the stand and rubbed her back. “And I take it you have an issue with that?”

“I dunno. Just been thinkin’ about it a lot, y’know? This whole mess. Didja read all the stuff Akyuu wrote about the folks from the mansion? Me 'n Lady Satori and all?”

“I can't say that I did. Yukari's had the papers, after all.”

“Yeah, well, I dropped by a while back ago to have a look. Y'know what things're like in this other Gensokyo? Lady Satori and Koishi are satori. Like, them creepy mind-readers. Apparently everyone hates 'em so much that Lady Satori barely leaves the house, and Koishi turned off part of her brain or somethin'? Plus Okuu's that hell raven, except it went even worse with her, and she ended up going half-nuts and trying to burn everything down for a while. It’s just weird to think about. How come in that universe, Yukari n’ Komachi are both still powerful types with cushy lifestyles, and me n’ my friends all get the shaft?”

“And you’re a cat.”

“ _An'_ I'm a cat.”

Alice nodded slowly. She'd never quite been the best with words, or... emotional stuff. While her peers had spent their teen years picking out their future spouses, she'd already taken to long nights of studying and scouring the countryside for items of magical interest. But, she could see where this was going.

“Sit up,” Alice said.

“Huh?”

“You heard me, dear. Up here on the counter with me.”

Rin gave a half-shrug in her position, then slipped down off of the counter, stepped around it, and slid into position next to Alice. “Can't say it's too comfy, though.”

“Mmh, not really, no. But, it does have one benefit...” Alice reached over and cupped Rin's cheek. It wasn't exactly difficult to pull her into a brief, firm kiss. When she pulled back, she could feel herself flushing slightly, but she did her best to flash a confident smile over to her. “So, you’re worried about how all of this is going to shake out?”

“If you wanna put it like that, yep! Just, the way I see it, either Gensokyo busts into a zillion pieces, it zips back to bein’ that other Gensokyo one way or another, _or_ we fix things so everything goes back to normal. That don’t seem like great odds for us.”

“Well, then you don’t need to worry about that,” Alice said, and took a quick look around to make sure nobody else was nearby before she added, “because I have a plan.”

“A plan, huh?”

“A plan. I’m not about to sit back and trust that Yukari has it all under control.”

“So what’s the plan, then? We gotta fight someone?”

Alice opened her mouth to answer that… and paused. A part of her was itching to reveal what she had in mind. Fine craftsmanship deserved to be appreciated. Her ego was still bruised from the fight at the Hieda manor, and a bit of praise would make a fine salve.

Nobody had said anything about it, of course. But Alice could feel it. Everybody who was present, tweaking their mental assessments of her. The fight hadn’t been at the end of a drawn-out incident when she was tired. Yukari didn’t have the element of surprise. They’d both had ample time to prepare. They’d been on equal footing at the start. And in those equal odds, Alice had given it her best shot… and lost.

Even now, she was still mentally revisiting the fight every time her thoughts drifted, combing through the memory fragments. What had she done wrong? What could she have done differently? What did she need to improve on next time? Defeat was a chance for improvement. It was also a public announcement that Alice Kirisame had applied herself to a problem and failed, and Alice did not take failure well.

But, gloating about how she was about to outsmart Yukari would be reckless at this point. She needed secrecy if this would work. And she needed this to work if she was going to redeem herself. “I can't tell you, I'm afraid. You'll find out soon enough, though. And even if everything goes wrong and you do end up as a cat... hmm. Well, I suppose that drawing of you as a kasha had a certain charm to it.”

“Takes a lot more than a pair of cat ears to ruin this package, ya know. But. Yeah. Thanks. Actually does make me feel better knowin' I got you on my side.” Rin leaned in for a quick peck to her cheek. “… dangit, now I just wanna cuddle and stuff all day, but you're gonna be doin' festival junk.”

“Tragically.” Alice paused, as a certain realization started tugging at her brain. “… wait, what time is it?”

“Eh?” Rin fished her watch out and flipped it open. “A bit after five. Why?”

Alice hopped down off the counter. “I... did agree to set off fireworks to mark the opening of the festival. Quite a few fireworks, actually. It's going to take half an hour just for me to get them all ready, and the festival officially opens at six, so...”

“Aw. Guess ya don't have much need for me bein' cute and stuff while you do that, huh?”

“I'm afraid not. Would you mind finishing the setup for the stall? If any customers show up before I get back, you can just ask them to wait.” Alice took a few hurried steps forward, then paused and glanced back. “Has Yukari talked to you about her ceremony?”

“What, her weird thing about lettin’ people leave? Yeah, a bit. Why?”

“… make sure you’re there. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, after all. It would be a shame to miss it, don’t you think?”

Allowing herself a private smile, Alice hurried off to finish her setup.

* * *

Fireworks exploded into the twilight sky above the Hakurei shrine. Yukari fought to keep her expression calm. The festival had finally begun.

She'd taken up a position in front of the shrine, visible enough to make her presence known, but just far enough away for none of the villagers to feel _too_ pressured into donating. There was a curve to these things, she had determined. A bit of heavy-handedness now could lead to fewer donations later.

Not that they were her main concern anyway. After shooting a pointed glance toward a man who seemed to be waffling about whether to donate, she looked out over the crowd below. By all apparent measures, they'd at least succeeded at their goal of making it the _biggest_ festival that Gensokyo had seen. It had only officially opened seconds ago, but there was already a bustling crowd of villagers and more than a few youkai drifting between the attractions. So many people had requested to set up stands that she'd needed to find space for another entire aisle of them.

A dull roar of conversation filled the air. A few fairies darted about overhead, tossing halfhearted danmaku at each other and giggling, while a particularly bold old man shouted for them to get out of the way lest they get shot out of the air with fireworks. There was a four-meter gap in the crowd in one area—Yukari couldn’t quite see anything over the sea of heads, but by now she knew how to recognize when Remilia had decided to bring her improbably large retinue of rabbits along with her. A pair of kappa were clambering over their strange machines, shouting insults at each other over the din of the crowd as they made last-minute adjustments.

It was Gensokyo in a microcosm. It wasn’t the first time that she’d gotten this feeling at a festival. In one look she could take in a dozen races of youkai, all… coexisting, if not cooperating, with humans tolerating their presence for the moment. She’d read enough books about the outside world to know that this was unique. Gensokyo was special. It was home, and while she wouldn’t readily admit it, she felt a profound love for… this. The whole thing, chaotic and harmonious.

“Oh, hey. Didn't figure I'd find you up here.” Komachi's heavy footsteps announced that she'd come to a landing just behind Yukari. “Not gonna go down there and enjoy things too?”

Yukari quickly dragged her thoughts back to the moment before she responded. “This is a trap first, and a celebration second. I should keep my wits about me in case anything strange happens.”

“Uh-huh. Personally I think you're just still sore you got banned from the ball toss stall last time.”

“Nothing of the sort.”

Komachi stepped up alongside Yukari, putting her hands on her hips as she took a look at the crowd below. “So you think the person who did all this is down there?”

“Naturally. They know that Gensokyo's in severe danger, and they're too selfish to tell anybody else. If somebody like that isn't powerful enough to leave Gensokyo on their own, they only have one option.”

“And what do you really think?”

Komachi's tone made it clear that she didn't believe that Yukari was quite as confident in the solution as she'd let on. Yukari tried not to let the annoyance show on her face. “Why would I lie about that?”

“C'mon, Yukari, it's me. You can drop the whole 'I'm the Hakurei shrine maiden, I'm too smart to ever be wrong' act. I've seen it happen a few times.”

Yukari shot Komachi a warning glance. Komachi didn't budge in the slightest. With a sigh, Yukari admitted, “The odds are good, I'd say. It isn't like there's any way to tell before they show up, and we're relying on my guesses about their motives being accurate, too. There isn't a perfect solution here. We just have to do the best that we can.”

“Sounds more accurate. And what if you're wrong?”

“Then we try something else. And something else after that, until we're out of time.”

“And if none of that works?”

“Then we evacuate Gensokyo, or swallow our pride and ask the moon for help, or something. Where are you going with this?”

“You're nervous about all this. Can't hide that from me. … I know you think it's part of your job to always be right and never let on that you don't have everything under control, but it isn't. Think you'd be a lot happier if you'd learn to admit when you're in over your head, even if there's nothing anybody else can do about it, either.”

“I'm never in over my head, you should be aware. I'm the Hakurei shrine maiden.” Yukari turned her attention back out over the festival. The crowds were growing thicker below, and a few more villagers had come up to make donations. Regardless of whatever else came of this, she wouldn't need to worry about raising money for the rest of this crisis, at least. Not that it would be a problem anyway, since this was ending tonight. Obviously.

In the distance, some clearly _very_ foreign music started playing, at a volume that would shame any band in the world. Apparently Hatate's... “ride” gadgets had begun operation. A low roar of machinery followed it, adding a steady sound beneath the murmur of the crowd. She'd have to see if they could adjust it to make a more pleasant sound. Half the villagers who heard such a thing from afar would probably worry that it was some sort of giant youkai. The smell of food drifted up from the stalls below.

This, at least, she could take pride in. Yukari was no more devout than her job demanded. Lady Ran was definitely more intelligent than any human that she knew, including herself, but worship was going a bit far. If her success here meant that Ran got more faith, then good for Ran. Yukari would be much happier about reminding all the factions of Gensokyo that the Hakurei shrine and its prodigal maiden should not be trifled with.

Speaking of which...

“… in about an hour, it will be time to gather up everybody who's said they want to leave Gensokyo,” Yukari said. “I'd like you to play a part in the ceremony.”

“Eh? Like what? Want me to sprinkle water over them or something? It'd probably just make all the humans more nervous if they see a half-phantom involved.”

“Not quite. Seven people have asked to leave Gensokyo. Four humans—mostly reckless teenagers—and three youkai. One of them, hopefully, is our culprit. I’d like you to be the one who tries to pick them out.”

“Huh. And how am I supposed to do that? All the youkai will look suspicious just by default.”

“You'll have to play it by ear. You always were better at reading people than I am, anyway. You can take them into the shrine and we'll say that you're preparing them. Hatate and I... will stall for time until you've checked.”

“And just what am I supposed to do? Not like I can just ask them, 'hey, did somebody here mess up reality?'”

“You could. I don't think you'd make much headway, though. If the guilty party won't reveal themselves... well, you'll just have to find some way to provoke them, now won't you?” Yukari shot Komachi a cryptic smile, then stepped past her. “I have preparations to make. I'll see you in an hour.”

* * *

“… thanks to the benevolence of the gods that the Hakurei barrier was created to preserve Gensokyo. In their further generosity, the gods have arranged for this one chance, so that the descendants of those who were present for that day might choose their own fate.”

Yukari's voice was muffled beyond the door. Hatate's voice was even harder to hear, as she hurried to add, “Like, _all_ the gods. Not just the Hakurei one. Thought that kinda thing should be clear!”

This was their idea of 'stalling for time,' apparently. A speech. And judging by the frequent pauses, an improvised one, at least on Hatate’s part.

Komachi looked over the group in front of her.

In addition to the seven hopeful emigrants that Yukari had anticipated, four more had shown up without forewarning. They ran the gamut from a farmer and his daughter to a fairy, standing in the corner and squirming from foot to foot impatiently. … Komachi had no idea if Yukari actually intended to let people leave, but she'd have to make an attempt to talk the fairy out of it if so. Dumb kid probably didn't know what she was getting herself into.

Unhelpfully, none of them were wearing a sign proclaiming themselves to be the guilty party, so she was going to have to work this out on her own. “Right, first,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the ongoing rambling speeches outside, “Can I get all the humans on that side of the room, and have all the youkai and stuff come over here? Actually, the fairy can go with the humans too.”

“Is this part of the ritual...?” one of the humans asked.

“Just a few formalities. Have to, uh, give the youkai a quick look to make sure we aren't releasing anyone who's going to cause too much trouble out there.”

With the fairy sorted out, she was left with four not-so-human suspects. From left to right: a werewolf, with her cloak pulled tight around her to hide the telltale arm hair. A fairly human-looking type, if you ignored the layer of dust clinging to her and the fact that she was carrying an ancient-looking pickaxe. What had to be a kettle tsukumogami, smiling nervously and trying to act like this was a completely normal situation in which to hold a kettle. And, a pale, slender girl with silky white hair and watery blue eyes.

After some consideration, Komachi looked to the girl with the pickaxe. “What kind of youkai are you?”

“Mountain goddess.”

“Why's a mountain goddess want to leave Gensokyo?”

The girl shot her an annoyed look, clenching and unclenching her jaw like she was considering whether to answer or slug Komachi in response. “Don't know if you've noticed, but only really have the one mountain around here. Half a dozen gods are already trying to claim the place, and that's not even countin' those big shots up top. Real tight job market, being a mountain goddess.”

“Shouldn't there be some part of the mountain that's _yours_ , though? Wherever you were... born or whatever.”

The goddess glanced aside, now looking a bit self-conscious. “Tengu chased me off.”

“Ah.”

Seemed pretty self-explanatory, really. All of these seemed like small fry. Not the kind of youkai that were going to go rewriting reality. … not that Komachi could name a youkai who seemed likely to, apart from maybe that gap youkai. But, this was possibly their one chance to catch the guilty party. She had to pull out all the stops.

“How about the rest of you? Why are you leaving?”

“I heard there's a lot more types of tea in the outside!” the girl with the kettle said.

“Can't get a job,” the werewolf said.

“Um,” said the white-haired girl.

Komachi stepped closer to her. “Well, go on.”

The girl shied back, running an anxious hand along the flap of the bag she was carrying. “I... I need to... no, um, I lost a... necklace out there and...”

Komachi grinned as she kept waffling between different answers. “This really shouldn't be a hard question to answer, y'know.”

The youkai's eyes went wide. After a moment's indecision, she tensed up. Just a little too late, Komachi realized that she was preparing to make a run for it.

The next few seconds were a blur. The youkai sprang past her, throwing her hands up in a forceful gesture. Mist exploded outward. It filled the air, damp and cold, so dense that it was almost choking. She couldn’t even see her own hands as she raised them to shield her face. The humans broke into a panic, shouting and scrambling away from her, and the youkai weren't far behind. More deliberate footsteps announced that the youkai she'd been confronting had broken into a sprint. Somewhere in the mist, the sound of a door and a bit of extra light piercing through the fog announced that she'd gotten outside.

“Yukari!” Komachi shouted, groping her way toward the door. “I found her!”

* * *

Yukari had never given many speeches. The shrine maiden job didn't require it very often. Her official religious duties mostly required her to give the occasional proclamation or perform kagura. Her less official youkai extermination duties involved shorter, more terse messages like, “He was possessed. I'm sorry, there was nothing else I could do,” or, “My fees for groundbreaking ceremonies are higher this year. Please consult the chart.” Speeches weren't a part of the job description.

But she could think on her feet, lie, and say meaningless platitudes, and those combined to about the same thing.

“As we enter this new era of our history, it's important for us to remember that Gensokyo's peace, as is all peace, was forged from the prosperity and abundance that the gods have provided for us. It would be folly not to thank them in kind, and angering them would lead to our ruin. Awe can become fear easily enough, and a god who is not shown the proper respect will soon remind you of that.”

“Uh, yeah, and like.” Hatate gestured vaguely in the air. She'd started off obviously nervous about this whole thing. Now, she just kind of seemed painfully oblivious to just how bad she was at this. “Festivals and stuff are good for entertaining them and whatever too. So make sure you attend those. Like, I mean, obviously we're all at a festival now, but. Other ones, I guess.”

Yukari shot a glance back to the shrine, mentally urging Komachi to hurry it up. She could stall for time for hours if she had to, but at some point it would become obvious, and the crowd in front of them was already growing antsy. No sign from within, though. Turning back to the crowd, she continued. “The agreements at the founding of Gensokyo, such as they were, provided for such things only out of the goodwill of—”

“Yukari! I found her!”

Komachi's muffled voice was quickly followed by the sound of hurried footsteps and an anxious murmur running through the crowd.

Yukari looked back just in time to spot a running figure before another cloud erupted outward, blanketing the entire pathway leading up to the shrine in mist. It wasn’t far from the back of the crowd, and things dissolved into confusion as some of the spectators suddenly found themselves cloaked in fog. Somewhere in there, she could still hear the youkai's footsteps, headed right toward the main festival grounds.

“How lucky,” Yukari said to the crowd, as she pulled out a stack of ofuda and gestured the yin-yang orbs into motion. “It seems that you'll all have a front row seat to a youkai extermination today.”

As the concerned murmurs of the crowd grew, she was already rising into the air.

From above, she had a better view of the situation. The cloud extended from the front of the shrine for about ten meters, cloaking the path in a thick haze that was only slowly starting to dispel. Villagers staggered out from its depths, waving the mist aside, but it didn't seem like anything else was moving within. It ended barely five meters from the nearest aisle of stalls, and the dozens of people walking between them. Her quarry had already escaped into the crowd.

Sensing Hatate flying up behind her, Yukari shouted back, “She went that way. Hurry!”

She drifted forward as she spoke, scanning the world below as she moved into place above the heart of the festival. Hatate's “rides” were still spinning below, one of them filling the air with music as its confused passengers stared up at her. The crowds had thickened even more. There were people _everywhere_ , which made it hard to pick out her target, but...

There. A bit of extra-quick movement caught her eye. Halfway down an aisle, a figure was fighting their way toward the shrine's front gate, pushing past villager and youkai alike.

There was no time for second-guessing. With a burst of speed, Yukari launched herself toward the girl, pulling her hand back with a fan of ofuda already prepared. The girl, rushing in the other direction, didn't notice Yukari's descent. Some of the villagers around her did, though. As they panicked and scattered away from her, the youkai finally sensed that something was amiss and turned around, just as Yukari swept the ofuda forward and threw them...

Into another rush of mist. This time, a mere few meters from the source of the clouds, she didn't have any time to react. She was engulfed in cold moisture, and the world went white. The nearby festival-goers backpedaled away from it, but dozens more were trapped inside along with her, left feeling their way through the near-blinding fog. 

Gritting her teeth, she made her way forward, weaving from figure to figure and checking each one she passed to make sure it wasn't the youkai she was looking for.

When she finally stepped out into the open air, Rin was waiting for her, looking rather confused.

“So, uh... this part of your plan, or should I be doin' somethin'?”

“We're looking for a girl with white hair. She makes these clouds, so either keep your distance or catch her quickly.”

“Gotcha!” There wasn't even a sign of movement. One moment, Rin was there. The next, she was gone. Efficient, at least.

The crowds were rapidly parting around the clouds, and Yukari herself for that matter, as the various festival-goers decided that they'd rather not get in the middle of a fight between the Hakurei shrine maiden and a youkai. It was starting to feel like a bit of a public relations fiasco, but she'd dealt with those before. Hopefully exterminating a dangerous youkai right in front of them would restore some faith. But... with everybody in a mild panic now, the youkai's motions were going to stand out less. Her job had just gotten a lot harder.

She was fairly certain, though, that a couple of those ofuda had landed. Her prey was wounded now.

Yukari floated back up, hovering just above the level of the stalls to try making herself less than _entirely_ conspicuous. A few aisles down, she caught a glimpse of Hatate, picking her way through the crowd and questioning people. Dozens of meters away near the gate, Rin popped into existence, glanced around, then vanished again. Yukari raised herself higher and scanned the crowds nearby. White hair wasn't all that uncommon in Gensokyo—not only did some of the older humans have it, but it wasn't an unheard-of color among youkai, either. She saw a few different instances of it nearby... but no, none were her youkai.

There, though. Two rows over, the Prismrivers were setting up for a concert. The area in front of their stage was already crowded with people jockeying for good seats. There was plenty of chaos in the crowd, but Yukari caught a glimpse of white in there. There was nothing to make it stand out… but her Hakurei instincts were screaming that she’d found her mark.

Yukari flitted over the nearest row of stalls and came to a landing. The quick approach seemed reckless here. She was going to have to be stealthy. Spotting Hatate giving her a questioning look off to the side, Yukari waved her forward, signaling her to get on the other side of the crowd. And, she pushed her way in.

With dozens of people jostling against each other, elbow room was at a premium. Fortunately, they all knew that standing near the Hakurei shrine maiden during strange events wasn't a recipe for a long life. She didn't have too much trouble pushing through the crowd at a steady rate, and soon it was parting in front of her.

And a few final people stepped aside, revealing the white-haired youkai. The girl was hunched down, giving her a lower profile but also making it harder for her to see her surroundings. Perfect. As Yukari charged forward, the youkai noticed her presence a moment too late.

The youkai thrust her arms out, engulfing the world in another billowing cloud and raising confused shouts from the crowd around them. Yukari tackled into her a split second later. She didn't stop until the girl was pinned on the ground beneath her and her gohei was held threateningly overhead.

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” the youkai squealed.

“I'm sure that you're going to be, yes.” Yukari leaned more of her weight down on the thrashing girl, restraining her. The villagers around them were clearing out very quickly, but she caught Hatate's form working her way over through the mist. “If you have any sins to confess, this would be a good time to start.”

“I didn't do anything!”

“Please don't waste my time. I'm not in a very good mood. Let's start with this: Why did you run away from the shrine?”

Hatate stepped into view, dimly visible a meter or so away in the fog. Barely a moment later, Rin appeared next to her, watching the scene curiously. Komachi was the last to arrive, peering at the girl with open confusion.

The youkai scrunched her eyes closed, like she was bracing for an impact. “I'm sorry! The witch said she’d give me a lot of money if I could do it and get away from you!”

“’The witch’?” Hatate asked, half-skeptical and half-suspicious.

“The, the blonde one! She said I just had to escape and she'd give me ten thousand yen!”

There weren't a lot of witches around Gensokyo. Or a lot of blondes, for that matter. And come to think of it, Komachi, Rin, and Hatate were here… but no Alice.

Yukari cursed under her breath and pushed herself up off of the youkai. “She's a decoy.”

* * *

“Yukari! I found her!”

Komachi's muffled voice, coming from inside the shrine, was everything that Alice wanted to hear. The next few seconds were a confused clamor of sounds—the soft hiss of fog billowing out to fill the shrine, a loud murmur of conversation from the crowds out front, the hurried footsteps of her decoy taking off at a sprint, followed soon by Komachi's…

Alice didn't give her great odds of escaping, but as long as she distracted Yukari and Komachi for a few minutes, it would have all been worth it. Either way, maybe she'd pay the girl extra. After both guessing Yukari's plan and managing to sabotage it, she was in a pretty good mood. She could afford a little generosity.

Once she heard Komachi’s footsteps rush out of the building, Alice slipped in the back door.

The shrine was still filled with mist. In the light coming from the opened main door, though, she could just make out silhouettes inside. The figures jostled against each other, hurrying toward the exit.

One, though, was heading away from the rest. Heading toward the back door, trying to sneak out unnoticed. With the mist obscuring their sight, the figure nearly bumped into her as they stepped into view.

At first glance, she was an old lady—hunched over, with a hood hanging down just far enough to leave her face mostly hidden, a gnarled walking stick in her hands, and a bag slung over her back. The way she jolted backward when she realized that somebody had caught her trying to slink off seemed awfully spry, though.

Alice already had the mini-hakkero in her hand. Now, she raised it, flicking it on to let a threatening jet of blue flame dance around the aperture. “Ah. I suspect you're who I'm looking for.”

Alice sensed the woman shooting her an annoyed glare beneath the hood. She stayed silent, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, like she was debating whether to fight or flee. Finally, she replied, “If you're going to shoot me, do it and stop wasting my time.”

“I'm here to offer you a deal, actually. You walked right into a trap set by the Hakurei shrine maiden. That much should be obvious by now. If you cooperate with me... I'll at least do what I can to help you escape. You’re going to need it. You’ll probably still be lucky to get out of here, considering.”

The youkai lifted her head just enough for Alice to make out a sharp-toothed grin, on a surprisingly non-wrinkly face. “Betraying her, huh? Thought all you incident-resolving types were on the same side.”

“We have our own ways of approaching things. Now are you coming with me, or not?”

The youkai grimaced, but nodded and stepped past Alice. “Might as well get moving, then.”

Alice was in agreement on that part, at least. The farther they got from the shrine, the more time she'd have... and she suspected that getting the full story was going to take more than a few seconds. She kept the hakkero in hand, ready to blast the youkai if she stepped out of line, but she seemed well-behaved for the moment. Only once they were well into the woods behind the shrine did Alice say, “Take off the hood. I want to see who I'm dealing with.”

The youkai hesitated, but apparently wasn't willing to push her luck. She pulled her hood back.

Beneath, she looked entirely too young for the old woman look to work. Her eyes were red, too, which was usually a bit of a giveaway. Her hair was black, with white and red streaks, and two short horns poked up from it.

Alice paused, frowning thoughtfully. “An oni...?”

“Amanojaku.”

Alice suppressed a wince. With what little she knew about amanojaku, this was already boding poorly. “And your name?”

The amanojaku shot her an annoyed glance and started moving again. After a few steps, though, she said, “Seija Kijin.”


	10. Chapter 8

Seija scowled at the ground as she walked, mentally berating herself for walking right into a trap. Actually, no, that wasn’t the worst part. That, she could live with. The real stinger was the fact that she’d gotten caught like _this_. Better to get beaten down by the shrine maiden than to owe her safety to some witch.

Her options didn’t look great. Her first instinct was to bust out her powers, flip the witch upside down, and make a break for it before she could recover. Alice had a point, though—if the shrine maiden was hunting for her, better to have an ally on her side. Well. “Ally.” Seija had never met a back that didn't look better with a few stab wounds.

And…

There was, of course, the matter of Gensokyo being in peril. Seija wasn't charitable by any measure, but the calculus changed a bit when _everybody_ was in danger. She, regrettably, was part of 'everybody.' In this case, she had a bit too much sense to gleefully welcome the disaster. She’d seen what was coming. Some fates were so unpleasant that even an amanojaku wouldn't pretend to like them.

“You want something from me,” she said, when the silence started grating on her. “Spit it out and get it over with.”

“Several things, actually.” Alice turned the mini-hakkero over in her hands, making a few adjustments without meeting Seija's eyes. It was no longer glowing with flame, but it was still hard to read the motion as anything but a tacit threat. “First off, could you tell me why you wanted to leave Gensokyo, miss Kijin?”

“Don't like any of the neighbors,” Seija answered sarcastically.

“If you don’t give me any answers, there’s no reason for me to protect you from Yukari. Would you like to take another shot at that?”

“Don’t waste my time with rhetorical questions. You know the answer, or you wouldn't be bugging me. Everything's falling apart.”

“Causality is failing, yes. Do you know why?”

“Does it matter? What makes you think you can fix it?”

“Try me.”

Seija grunted. “First of all, I'm innocent. As far as this particular crime goes, at least. And look, I'm an amanojaku. I'd love to claim responsibility for something like this, but I didn't do it and I can't fix it.”

“Then who did?”

“Ever hear of the inchlings?”

“I've heard of Issun-Boushi, if that's what you mean. Are there more than one?”

“Loads of them. One of them is responsible for all this, and you're not going to find her. You want my advice? Pack up and help me look for a way through the barrier.”

“I’m not about to evacuate just yet. Why don’t you tell me more about this girl?”

It didn't sound like a suggestion. Seija grit her teeth. Even when it was in her best interests, being helpful chafed against her every instinct. “Are you taking me somewhere, or are we just going to wander in the woods while you annoy me with questions?”

“We're making our way down into a hollow. It leads toward the human village, and since it isn't an actual path, it hopefully won't be one of the first places the shrine maiden looks. Happy?”

“Nope.” But it was better than any plan Seija had. This sucked. All of Gensokyo rearranged and put in peril, and yet it was an impersonal, implacable kind of peril that hardly nobody even knew about. Kind of hard to use something like that to sow discord. She sighed. “The girl who's responsible is a descendant of Issun-Boushi. She did all of this. The _plan_ was to have a whole revolution in one go. Turn all the hierarchies in Gensokyo on their head. Put the weak in charge, and make the powerful into nobodies.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that an inchling did all of that?”

“Believe whatever you want. Ever hear of the Miracle Mallet?”

“… is it really powerful enough for something like _that_?”

“Not really. I think it tried, but it did a pretty sad job of it. Like you, for example. You're that witch who flies all around sticking her nose in other people's business and solving incidents, right?”

“I don't know if I'd put it like that, but I'm a witch, I fly, and I solve incidents, yes.”

“Don't get pedantic. And who were you before? If you've figured everything out, you’ve got to know that much, right?”

“Supposedly, I'm meant to be a youkai magician who specializes in doll magic.”

“See? Exactly what I mean. If this'd worked out, the one who ended up as one of the incident resolvers would've been, I don't know. A fairy. Some random human. Somebody who was actually on the bottom, not some magician who was probably one step from the top of the food chain anyway. Frickin' waste.”

“It doesn't seem like a very good revolution if nobody remembers it.”

“ _I_ 'd remember it. Do you think the two of us were stupid enough to change ourselves too? We could have a pretty good time, just watching the results. Hey, what do you think you’d be? A fairy? Some snot-nosed kid in the village? Nah. I bet you'd be some weak beast youkai, scrounging for scraps on the edge of the village until one day, maybe a human starts looking a little too tasty, and—”

“So what went wrong, then? Why didn't you get the universe you wanted, and why is this one falling apart?”

“What makes you think I know?! I wasn’t even the one using the mallet.” Seija met her eyes, grinning toothily and taking her time to savor the statement as she added, “I can't tell you a thing.”

“I think that you have to know something, and you’d do well to be open about it. What happened? What did you see?”

Seija groaned. “Anyone ever tell you you ask too many questions?” When Alice didn't show any sign of budging, though, she continued. “She waved the mallet and made her wish or whatever. Everything felt weird for a second. Then we were surrounded by... I dunno what the hell you call it. Time went all wrong.”

“Was it blue?”

“Sure. I guess.”

“I think I’m familiar with it, then.”

“Then you know more than I do, so why are you wasting your time bugging me? … look, I barely even got out of there. It felt like it took a week. Clawed my way out, had a look around, and here you all are. Scrambled up, but not the way I wanted. You’re a real letdown, you know. How’s it feel, knowing that your whole world was an accident?”

“I might say that it matches my expectations,” Alice said dryly. “What about her? Where is she?”

“I dunno. Probably still stuck in there. She wasn’t moving much, and I wasn’t sticking around to check.”

“You just left her there?”

Seija snarled. “Don't you moralize at me. If you'd caught us in the act, you would have gladly beaten her into the ground, and don't even pretend you wouldn't. I know how things work around here.”

“And _you_ abandoned your ally to a far worse fate. I really don’t think that you have much room to talk.”

On one hand, this was _great_. Barely a few minutes alone with this girl and Seija had already sparked a burning ember of loathing in her heart. Another hour or so of fanning it, and she could get this prissy thing making death threats. On the other hand... taking insults calmly didn't come naturally to amanojaku. “Yeah, I did! Abandoned her then and there. Do you think I care? I used her, and she didn't work. I'll throw away my broken tools whenever I want.”

Seija could feel that ember as it crackled, threatening to grow into a bonfire. Alice shot her a look of disgust, but stayed quiet. For a few minutes, she kept quiet, walking in blessed silence, without any annoying questions. Finally, though, she asked, “So where was this? Where can I find your frozen inchling?”

“Are you stupid? I just said, time isn't working right around there. I barely got out, and I'm a youkai. If a human like you walks in, you're dead meat. Not that I'd mind, but...”

“If we don't stop this, then we're all going to end up like that sooner or later. Maybe I'll risk it. Maybe I'll study it and see if I can develop a spell to neutralize it. I can't do anything, though, if I don't know _where it is._ ”

“Well, I just love being the bearer of bad news, so: it's underground, somewhere around the World of the Oni.”

“… Former Hell?”

“Where all the oni live! Whatever you want to call it. In a big cavern somewhere under the mountain. About three kilometers of tunnels to crawl through in the dark before you find it. I couldn't find the place again if I wanted to, and I don't.”

Alice thoughtfully ran a thumb along one edge of the mini-hakkero. “I think that you're lying. I think you know the way there, and you could show me if I made it worth your while.”

“Actually, yeah, let’s do it. Want to go into a dark cave alone with an amanojaku? Hey, how well do you think you can watch your back? Let your attention slip for one second, and the first rock I find—”

A few silvery streaks slashed by, and Seija was cut off with a yelp as she backpedaled. They were close enough for her to feel the wind off of them. Close enough that it was hard to say whether it had been meant as an attack, or a very skillful warning shot. They came to a stop, buried halfway in the ground: Six throwing needles, almost as long as her forearm and wickedly sharp.

“Alice!” The voice came from behind them, dozens of meters up in the air. “It seems that you've decided to borrow my guest of honor.”

Seija tugged her hood back over her head and reluctantly glanced back. There, descending through the canopy of trees, was the Hakurei shrine maiden. She already had another fistful of throwing needles fanned out in one hand, her gohei slung back over her shoulder.

“So much for you leading me to safety, huh?” Seija asked Alice, in a tone of sarcastic accusation.

“Quiet.” Alice flicked the mini-hakkero back on, while another hand fished in her pocket. She was clearly torn between her options. It didn't last long. “Go.”

“What, let her get a good hunt in before she exterminates me?”

“I'll slow her down, but only if you _go now_.”

Seija hesitated. There was one more topic weighing on her mind… but, no. She hadn’t even wanted to be helpful in the first place. Keeping a few secrets to herself would make for a nice insurance policy in the long run. “Fine, you want to be a decoy? Be my guest.”

Seija lingered exactly long enough to shoot a rude gesture toward the shrine maiden before she took off running. Alice was already weaving her hands through a spell as she passed, drawing a wall of deadly light between her and Yukari. Seija barely made it a dozen more steps before she heard the violence of a duel break out behind her.

She grinned to herself. At least now things were getting interesting.

* * *

The fight that followed was a long one. But it wasn’t much of a fight.

Alice threw up wall after wall of magical barriers, enough to slow down even the Hakurei shrine maiden's notorious seal-busting techniques. She expended potions by the fistful, filling the air with fog, choking clouds, and the occasional explosion when things got desperate. She weaved spell cards that were little more than cages of projectiles, restricting Yukari's movement and slowing her down.

In other words, she stalled Yukari. She did whatever she could to buy Seija time to escape, sealing the likelihood that she’d have the amanojaku’s confession all to herself. She didn’t have a watch. If she had to guess, though, she kept it up for six minutes before she finally collapsed to the ground, too exhausted and bruised to continue.

Yukari wasn't far behind her. Her feet had barely even settled on the ground before she jabbed the tip of her gohei beneath Alice's chin, forcing her drooping head upward. “Tell me, Alice, why I shouldn't just exterminate you here and now.”

“M-mmh.” Alice was panting for air. Trying to salvage what dignity she had left, she raised her chin from the gohei, swiping blood and sweat from around her mouth with the back of a hand. “For one thing, I’m human.”

“A human who just helped a youkai escape from me. Presumably, the youkai I needed to capture to save Gensokyo.”

“How unfortunate for you. A-ah, what was it you said the other day? Oh, right. ‘Then it seems that you won’t be the one fixing this. _Truly_ —” Alice wheezed out a ragged breath. “—a pity.'”

“As relaxing as that sounds, that would require anybody else to be capable of getting the job done.” After a pointed warning prod with the tip, Yukari pulled her gohei back and rested it over her shoulder. She stared judgmentally down. “Are you going to explain yourself?”

“It should be self-explanatory, I think.” Standing up felt like it would be a bad move at the moment, but Alice still straightened her posture, trying not to look too upset as she rubbed sorely at a few tender spots. “Or did you really expect everybody else to just sit back and leave the fate of our _reality_ in your hands?”

“Yes, actually, if you would be so kind.” Yukari casually flicked her wrist as she spoke. A few more throwing needles appeared between her fingers. “Now, why don't you tell me what you and your youkai friend just talked about?”

“You wouldn't use those on me.”

“Wouldn't I? I won't hesitate when it comes to eliminating threats to Gensokyo. And right now, it appears that you're one of those threats.”

Alice weighed her many, many options. She knew that Yukari wasn't bluffing. She'd _seen_ Yukari destroy youkai for much smaller threats to Gensokyo's balance, like becoming a jinyou. If she tried to fight, her odds weren't good, after the battering she'd already taken. Running was probably out of the question, too. Maybe if she could sneakily pull out a potion or something to make a distraction... but she'd almost exhausted her supplies earlier, and Yukari didn't seem inclined to let her go rifling through her pockets.

She was just going to have to hope that things weren't quite that serious just yet.

“So now that I’ve found something you care about, you suddenly want to collaborate? No, I don’t think so. I’m going to save Gensokyo this time, and I’m not going to do it by being your pawn. Now, if you’re going to exterminate me, please hurry up. I have things to do.”

“Hmm... no. No, I don't think that I will. Not after you so kindly offered to do my work for me.” Yukari straightened up, once again looking like they were simply having a normal conversation. The needles had disappeared from her hands at some point, and Alice hadn't even seen them move. “Please, don't let me stand in your way. I'm sure that a dashing heroine like you has a busy schedule.”

“Your consideration is heartwarming.” Alice knew better than to assume that Yukari was doing this out of the goodness of her heart, but she wasn't about to turn down the chance to leave while she still could. She rose to her feet—shakily, but she managed to steady herself after a few seconds, looking Yukari in the eye. “If I pull this off, you'll thank me.”

“And if you fail, I'm not sure if there will be a 'you' or a 'me' for that interaction to happen between.” Yukari flashed her a cold smile. “Take care, Alice. We'll be seeing each other again very soon.”

* * *

“And just where’d that shrine maiden get off to? How’s a girl supposed to turn a profit with all this?”

Komachi glanced down—way down—to find Mamizou peering up at her. “How am I supposed to know?”

“Don’t play coy with me, missy. You two are fast friends, aren’t you?”

Komachi sighed to herself, but decided not to push the matter. As kappa went, she could have done worse than Mamizou. Others would be cussing her out or demanding compensation by now. Mamizou could be annoyingly persistent, but she was sensible enough to know when to cut her losses. “She headed out to take care of some official shrine business, I guess. Dunno when she’ll be back.”

“Seems like somebody ought to be out there calming things down, don’t you think?”

Komachi looked to the crowd below. Or, well, what remained of the crowd. Having a youkai manhunt take place in the middle of the festival hadn’t been great for the atmosphere. That alone was enough to spook most of Gensokyo’s humans… and now the resident shrine maiden was nowhere to be seen, and the occasional flash from the forest suggested that she was fighting somebody. It didn’t exactly reassure people about their safety. Half of the humans were already on their way back to the village, with a bottleneck around the shrine’s exit. Dozens of rabbits had scattered in a panic during all the ruckus, leaving Remilia barking commands at them while Sakuya dutifully rounded them up one by one. A few vendors had already decided to cut their losses and started dismantling their stalls.

“It might be a bit late for that.”

“Eh, probably aren’t wrong. It’s a right shame. Suppose I’ll have to talk to that other shrine maiden. You give that Hakurei girl an earful for me when she gets back, you hear?”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

With a satisfied nod, Mamizou turned and started back toward the rides, waving a hand overhead and shouting, “Take it down, girls!”

At least the noise was dying down a bit. Komachi liked lively scenes as much as the next person, but compared to the tranquility of the Netherworld, the baseline level of the land of the living was somewhere around ‘noisy.’ Any relief she felt, though, was twisted by other emotions. 

In the distance, a loud crash announced that one of the vendors had let the front of their stall collapse to the ground, the first step in disassembling it. The crowd was growing thinner by the moment, as the bottleneck at the exit to the shrine grounds was finally cleared up. The festival might limp on, but it seemed like it wasn't going to quite recover back to its former glory. Real shame. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to try those big kappa contraptions that Hatate had been so excited about.

She had the uneasy feeling, too, that things were going to get worse before they got better. If they even did.

* * *

Kanako bowed her head. Reverence, she had learned, was one of the many skills that a good reporter needed to be able to fake. The hall was narrow, deliberately made only wide enough for a single person to pass through at a time. A series of heavy curtains parted in front of her, made of a cloth far finer than anything to be found in the human village. On the far end, she stepped out into the chamber from which the great tengu dispatched their commands.

It was an appropriately impressive room. Three of the walls were built of wooden beams cut from some of the oldest trees in Gensokyo, many of them thicker than she was tall. The back wall, on the other hand, had been hewn from the face of the mountain itself. Several meters up, five craggy ledges poked out, each with just enough space for a single elder. Each wore a traditional tengu mask, carved with such detail as to be almost lifelike. Their heavy robes made each look like a hulking, superhuman figure. The naked stone behind them had been etched into deep carvings of terrible war gods and vengeful bodhisattvas.

To the uninformed, the effect was probably supposed to make the great tengu look like ancient yamabushi, powerful and ascetic. Kanako, though, had been in this room just often enough to know that if you watched really closely when one shifted position, you could see the cushions beneath them. Nice cushions too; outside world stuff. The two-faced bastards.

Silently, she made her way to the center and knelt down. For a few minutes, she simply waited to be acknowledged. It was tradition, all part of the necessary rituals for presenting oneself to them. Even after going through it dozens of times, she still wasn’t sure if there was some reason for this bit of ceremony, or if they just liked messing with their underlings.

“You may rise, Shameimaru,” one finally said, in a croaking voice. “We have received preliminary reports from our agents at tonight’s festival. Have you read the contents yet?”

Kanako dipped her head in the slightest nod as she rose to standing. “Word has gotten around.”

“Our agents were unable to hear most of the conversation, but what little they did gather concerns us. Whatever information the amanojaku has, it must be ours. And if she is to be captured, Gensokyo must know what has happened. The time has come for you to publish your article.”

Kanako softly cleared her throat. “Sirs, if I may: wouldn’t it be better to let the information corps search for her first before going that far? When word gets out—”

“There will be a period of chaos,” said yet another. “But that’s a concern for the other races. Not for the tengu.”

“It might become our concern pretty quickly if it leads to any humans dying.”

The room went silent. Kanako kept her gaze stubbornly lowered, refusing to show any acknowledgment that she had stepped out of line.

Finally, a reply: “Your ability to question orders has always been one of your most endearing traits.” It was so dry that even she couldn’t say whether it was sarcasm or not. “We have received nine reports of these… anomalies so far, with a dozen more unconfirmed. What we know of the amanojaku’s story agrees with what we know of the Child of Miare’s. All of our sources suggest the same thing: Some force recreated Gensokyo’s very history, and it is now failing.”

“As I understand it, yes.”

“And the amanojaku is our key to locating that force and using it to resolve this incident.”

“Even if so, that doesn’t—”

“You would do well to mind your tongue, Shameimaru,” said one that hadn’t piped up yet, from the far side of the room.

Kanako didn’t look up, but tried to hide the way that her teeth clenched.

“This is no normal incident,” continued the first. “The ability to rewrite reality hangs in the balance. No other faction can be trusted with such a power. The Hakurei shrine maiden is a child who would waste it. Only the tengu possess the knowledge, foresight, and wisdom to be trusted with such a task.”

Now, Kanako couldn’t stop herself from looking up. “And just what will we do with an opportunity like that, I wonder?”

“Whatever is necessary to create a future in which the tengu continue to prosper.”

What a weasely answer. Not for the first time, she considered really speaking her mind and seeing where that took her. There were worse fates than banishment. She’d prefer a bit less editorial oversight anyway.

But, this didn’t seem like the hill to die on. “… I understand. I have the draft written up already. I’ll just need to add the new details.”

“Good. You have a reservation at the printing house in four hours. I’m sure that the deadline will be no issue for one of your skill.”

“I’m the best for a reason, sirs.” Kanako dipped a stiff bow. “By your leave…?”

“You are dismissed. We will look forward to your handiwork, as always.”


	11. Chapter 9

“Alright, hold it still.”

At Hatate's prompting, Yukari leaned back, bracing her weight against the board in her hands. Hatate planted her foot on it, grabbed a perpendicular board, and tugged. A groan of protest ran through the entire structure, but it began moving. Little by little, she pulled them apart, splitting the joint where they’d been nailed together.

And then, they ripped apart. The sudden freedom left Hatate stumbling backward. She tripped and landed on her butt, coming to a stop with a soft thud.

The board landed in her lap. Another board was still affixed to it, hanging half-attached by a crooked nail. She smacked the two against the ground until they came apart, then tossed them onto her cart.

“ _There_.” Hatate swiped the back of a hand across her forehead. “Is that the last of them?”

“There are a few more left, but I expect the owners to handle the disassembly themselves,” Yukari said. “I'm very good at motivating youkai.”

“That just means you're going to threaten to exterminate them if not, right?”

“I refuse to divulge my methods. Trade secret.”

“Uh-huh.”

Hatate pushed herself back to her feet and glanced around. It had been three days since the festival, and the clearing around the Hakurei shrine was only now looking presentable again. The attendees had left quite a mess, even though the crowds had never entirely rebounded after the chase scared them off. With such a big disruption to the attendance, quite a few vendors had failed to turn a profit. It seemed that some of them had decided to abandon the stalls where they’d stood, cutting their losses and getting back to business elsewhere.

Three days, and this would be the eighth load of wood she'd hauled away. If nothing else, she was getting a good workout out of this.

“So, like...” Hatate turned her gaze back to Yukari. The things she wanted to say weren't coming easily to her, but at this point she was concerned enough to force them out anyway. “Are you just gonna stay mad at Alice forever, or what?”

“I think you might be confused, dear Hatate. She's made herself into a threat to Gensokyo as a whole. This goes a bit beyond being 'mad' at her.”

“Come on, you know what I mean.”

“When she shares the information she got from that youkai, I'll consider forgiving her. Until then, you'd be better served giving her this lecture.”

Hatate hesitated, studying Yukari's face, but she didn't show any sign of budging on this issue. Which was a pain. When youkai and gods pulled the 'I'm a thousand years old and I can be as stubborn as I want' card, that was one thing. Yukari, though, was a fellow human. She was supposed to be more reasonable than this.

“Well, I'll tell her that if I see her. Anything else you’d like me to take care of before I leave?”

“No, I don't think so. You've done your share.”

“Yeah, jeez, _you're welcome_.”

Hatate grabbed the handle of her cart and started down the path toward the village. Really, between Yukari's stubbornness and her apparent inability to say things like 'thank you,' the revelation that she was originally a youkai in some other world wasn’t much of a shock.

Not that it was Hatate's main concern right now. Three days of cleaning up the Hakurei shrine had meant three days of picking up litter, breaking down abandoned stalls, and helping the kappa pack up their machinery. Sure, they hadn't worked sunrise to sunset that whole time, but it was still _enough_. Hatate had barely had more than a few hours to relax per day.

A few hours! Barbaric.

Today, though, they'd wrapped up around noon. Once she delivered this last load of scrap wood to the carpenter, she was free to do whatever she wanted for the rest of the day. She'd already split the festival's earnings with Yukari, and the carpenter had been paying decent rates for the wood, too. The rest of the day was hers, and she could afford to spend it however she wanted.

In theory, she'd promised Yukari that she'd spend a while trying to dig up leads on this fugitive youkai she was so interested in, but that could wait. First, she needed lunch. Something nice, maybe one of the more expensive restaurants over on the end of the village with all the old manors. Then she could maybe buy some sweets to take back to the goddesses, take a long hot bath to work some of the soreness out of her muscles, curl up in bed with a good book...

Hatate drifted off into her fantasies as she walked. The path from the shrine to the village was a straightforward one and, as far as rural youkai territory went, pretty safe. It sloped gently downward to the plain at the center of Gensokyo, where it joined with a broader road heading into the village. Soon, she was passing farmhouses every minute or two. Past the eastern gate, the path opened up into a broad street with buildings lining either side and enough pedestrians that she had to weave between them.

The carpenter's shop was closer to the south side of the village, though. She still knew the way by heart at this point, and weaved through a few turns, working her way around the center of the village and back toward its outskirts. A footbridge rumbled beneath the cart's wheels. There was just one more turn to make, and—

“You bastard!”

The shout snapped her out of her daze. It wasn't hard to spot the source, either. Right in front of Suzunaan, two men were locked in combat with each other. It was brutal, hand-to-hand fighting, the sort of thing she’d seen outside her school once or twice. A fist swung overhead before arcing back down in a forceful blow. The solid _thump_ of flesh on flesh was audible even from a distance.

“W-whoa! Hey, stop it!”

Hatate dropped the cart and patted herself down, hunting for her gohei. She was already sprinting toward the pair by the time she found it, and whipped it up, waving it overhead. Neither of them seemed to even notice her, but this wasn’t the time to half-ass things. Skidding to a stop, she swiped it downward. The air above the two roiled, split by an explosive gale. It slammed into the men with enough force to batter them toward the ground. The man who’d been on the defensive lost his balance, landing on his ass. The other staggered, barely managing to stay upright.

To her left: the man on the ground, looking bewildered and dabbing at the steady stream of blood oozing from his nose.

To her right: a man who looked like he was debating whether to throw the next punch at his foe or Hatate.

They both looked human, at least. On one hand that was relieving. A youkai growing bold enough to attack somebody in the village would have been bad news. On the other hand, this sort of deal wasn’t really her specialty. Actually, it was people. People weren’t her specialty in general. At least when it came to danmaku you knew who was on your side.

“O-okay, whoa!” She jabbed the gohei toward them, and wasn’t quite sure if it was a warning, or a desperate plea for the outraged man to not try his luck against her. “What the heck’s going on?!”

“Stay out of this!” the aggressor roared. “He took everything from me! Asshole has it coming!”

“Don't, don't listen to him,” the other pleaded past a busted lip. “He's a crazy drunk, he doesn't know—”

“Hey, hey!” Hatate gave her gohei a threatening waggle overhead. Then paused. She really didn't know where she was going with this. “Okay, like, one at a time, maybe?”

“He stole my life! I knew it! _I_ should've been the one to marry her! It's—!”

The man on the right cut off with a growl of frustration, lunging toward his opponent. Hatate barely managed to dart into range just in time to intercept him. She dove in between the two, letting out an embarrassing squeak as she threw up a barrier in his face. He rebounded off of it with a hollow thud, clutching his nose and cursing as he glared at her.

“Look, um. Why don’t you just get out of here while you have a chance? I really don’t want to beat up some rando, you know?”

Hatate would admit that as ultimatums went, this wasn’t one of the best. It seemed effective, though. After a brief hesitation, the man turned, skulking off to lick his wounds.

Hatate turned back to the downed man. “Now, do you mind telling me what the heck that was about?”

He’d obviously been debating whether to strike his own retreat while Hatate was distracted. Still clutching his face, he shot her a look of annoyance, but seemed more inclined to be reasonable. “Like you don’t know. All you youkai-exterminatin' types was in on it, weren't ya?”

“Eh? In on what?”

“The news!” He took his hand away from his face, flicking blood from his fingers. “Don’t have to pretend anymore. It’s all over the news.”

Hatate opened her mouth to press a few more questions onto him, but was interrupted by somebody softly clearing their throat. The curtain in Suzunaan’s doorway parted briefly. Rinnosuke peeked out, peering skittishly around. After a quick survey proved that the coast was clear, he straightened up, trying to pretend to have far more dignity than he clearly did as he stepped out. “Miss Hatate, I’m sorry about all of this. The tengu didn’t even tell me.”

“Okay, are you actually gonna tell me what it is, or keep being all cryptic and junk?”

In lieu of an explanation, Rinnosuke offered up a rolled newspaper.

Hatate unrolled it, shooting him a quizzical glance as she did so, then opened it to the front page.

## The Bunbunmaru News

#### Season 128, Satsuki special edition #1

 **Gensokyo Reshuffled by Unknown Force**  
_Past rewritten, Hakurei shrine maiden stumped_

Recently, a number of unusual phenomena have been plaguing Gensokyo. On the 21st of Satsuki, a strange object described as 'miraculous' by the Moriya shrine was seen to levitate into the air in the middle of the human village, before erupting into hundreds of pieces of pottery. On the 24th, an inexplicable anomaly was spotted elsewhere in the village, and only resolved by the timely intervention of miss Komachi Konpaku (pictured below.) Several reports of other oddities have made their way to the tengu information corps since these began, although few have been verified.

As disparate as these events are, it has been discovered that they share a single source: The Gensokyo that we know only came into being recently, when some powerful force rewrote history. This was first revealed in a secretive meeting between several prominent local youkai hunters at the manor of the human noble Hieda no Mokou. While their reasons for keeping this information to themselves are unknown, independent investigation by daring tengu reporters has unearthed the following information:

  * When this reshuffling occurred, every being in Gensokyo took on the role of somebody else. In many cases, humans became youkai and vice-versa. As one example, the current Hakurei shrine maiden, Yukari Hakurei, was originally the mysterious gap youkai sage, currently known only as the employer of one Reimu Yakumo.
  * This state of affairs is not stable, and the anomalies that have been observed are signs of its impending collapse. We may have only a matter of weeks before Gensokyo is destroyed.
  * The event earlier this week, in which a mysterious figure was apprehended by several youkai hunters during the joint Hakurei-Moriya festival, was an attempt to catch the culprit behind this issue. It is believed that she is an amanojaku, and she is still at large.



Knowing all of this, the tengu nation could not in good conscience allow this information to remain secret. We will, of course, be dedicating our every resource to resolving this problem of a societal scale. Anybody who has information on the whereabouts of the fugitive amanojaku is asked to report this information to the tengu. A sizable reward will be forthcoming once it has been verified.

Please read future issues to stay informed of any ongoing developments in this story.

“… great,” Hatate sighed.

“So it’s true,” the bleeding man grumbled, pushing himself to his feet. “Figures.”

“H-hey, whoa, wait, I never said that! I mean, um, it _is_ true, but...” Hatate took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Look, we’re working on it, okay?”

“And what’re we supposed to do in the meantime?!”

“That's a _super_ good question, and I wish I had an answer for you. Go home! Pray to the gods if you're not sure. Getting into fistfights and stuff isn’t gonna help anything, though!”

The man scowled, but capitulated. Murmuring something that sounded vaguely like thanks for saving him from a beatdown, he walked off, dragging one bruised leg behind him.

“ _Thank_ you,” Rinnosuke said, breathing a relieved sigh. “I’ve barely had a moment of peace all day. As soon as I sold that first paper…”

“And, um, just when was that?”

“Just over an hour. Miss Kanako was late with this morning's delivery. The ink was barely dry when they arrived, so I assume—”

Rinnosuke was cut off by another shout. A wave of shouts, actually. The source was more distant and muffled, but it was hard to mistake the chorus of demanding, raised voices.

Hatate glanced in the direction of the noise. It had to be a few streets away, at least. The fact that she could even hear it at this distance was concerning by itself.

“Ah...” Rinnosuke was looking in the same direction. “Er, do you think that's also...?”

“I wouldn't bet against it. Stay here, okay? And don't sell any more of those papers!”

“The news is already getting around. Even if I stop—”

But Hatate was already airborne. 

In flying terms, it wasn't a long trip. By the time she leveled off above the buildings, she could already make out the source of the disturbance. Barely ten meters from the front of the Hieda manor, a dozen or so villagers were gathered together, forming a circle around a small group. There in the center, two servants were struggling to keep them from swarming Mokou.

Even a dozen meters up, she could make out their voices.

“—just want to know if it will be okay, and—!”

“—died a year ago, and I just want to know if it was supposed to happen, and—!”

“—true?! What are we supposed to do if—!”

They were pressing in on all sides, keeping the servants busy. Packed so tightly, in fact, that she couldn't even see a way for her to slip in and calm things down.

“H-hey, whoa, calm down!” she shouted, descending to the ground on the outskirts of the group. “This is nuts!”

A few people on the nearest edge of the crowd shot her brief glances, but she wasn't even sure her voice had reached the rest of them over the racket.

She didn't have many options. She could shout all day without being heard. Things weren’t quite so dire as to need the sort of forceful intervention she’d used with the two brawling men. After a brief consideration, Hatate took a step back, channeling energy through her gohei and slashing it upward.

The air split in a thunderclap. A wall of concussive force burst outward, scattering the other sounds like insignificant insects and tugging at clothes. The villagers stumbled back, coughing and shielding their faces with their hands. When the wind impacted the ground, a cloud of dust rebounded upward, leaving a haze up to waist level.

Pretty much every eye turned toward her in the aftermath. She’d gotten their attention, at least.

Which meant that the crowd had a new target to latch onto.

“Y-you, you're that shrine maiden, right?! You have to know something—!”

“Please, my husband, I _have_ to know if he's supposed to be—”

“Whoa, whoa, wait!” Hatate stumbled backward, raising her hands defensively. “I don't know anything! I mean! Okay, I know stuff, but it was all in that paper!”

The crowd closed in, parting for just long enough to envelope her like some kind of amoeba. A few hands tugged at her clothes, desperate petitioners going that extra step to make themselves stand out. She tried to back up again, but only bumped into the wall of people behind her.

“—owe us an explanation?! How long were you hiding this?!”

“—fix this?! What are we supposed to do?! My son, I have to get my son out—”

Packed so tightly around her, the villagers were starting to jostle against each other for space. She elbowed at them, trying to force an opening big enough to slip out through, but it was like trying to fight water. Wherever one person got dislodged, another was happy to take their place.

“I can't answer any of this! Get off of me! W-we're trying to do everything we can, but I can't do anything about it if I'm stuck here!”

The villagers only grew more desperate. They were pushing in so tightly that she could barely even squirm in protest. Their voices were deafening. She cringed, halfway expecting them to start ripping at her clothes or fighting each other for the privilege of having their questions answered.

Before that could happen, though, a wave of energy slashed across the crowd, mere millimeters above the tallest members. Here and there, bits of hair or headwear that had stuck up a bit too far were left drifting down like falling snowflakes. A brief silence followed, punctuated by the sound of a sword stabbing into the ground.

“Seems like everyone's got a lot of questions, but we don't have answers right now,” Komachi bellowed, from somewhere beyond the wall of bodies. “Why don't you all go home and spend some time with your families if you're so worried? Best thing you can do at a time like this.”

“But...!” one of the men protested. “My wife, I _have_ to know if she—”

“Friend.” Komachi's voice was genial, in a way that somehow only enhanced the threatening undertones. “Nobody can tell you anything. I promise we don't know that kind of stuff. Go home. It wasn't a suggestion, okay?”

To his credit, the man held his ground. The other villagers, though, quickly seemed to realized that they had other places to be. One by one, they slunk away, with only the occasional dirty look back in her direction. When he realized that his backup was disappearing, the man scoffed, whirled around, and stormed off.

Hatate breathed a long, long sigh of relief. She could finally see past a meter away again, at least. Mokou's servants were fussing over her, making sure that she hadn't been harmed during the excitement. Komachi was still standing a few meters away, her hands resting on the hilt of her sword as she kept a warning gaze on the retreating villagers.

It was a hell of a pose. Like a statue, maybe. Or the heroine on the cover of some kind of fantasy novel. Not even one of the bad ones.

“A-ah, thanks. That was nuts.”

“Uh-huh.” Komachi dislodged her sword from the ground with a casual tug, then stepped closer, glancing over Hatate. “Are you okay? You look kind of... dazed or something.”

Up close, it was much harder to ignore some things. Like the subtle contours of muscles in Komachi’s arms. Or the concerned, earnest expression on her face. The sort of expression a girl would make as she scooped you up and packed you off to safety, Hatate imagined.

A drop of sweat caught Hatate's eye as it crept down toward Komachi's neckline, and she had to jerk her head aside to hide her blush.

“I'm fine! I'm fine. Just, um, shook me up a bit, e-ehe. Mokou, how about you?”

“I'm immortal. The worst they could do is annoy me.”

Even as Mokou spoke, her servants were hurriedly trying to regain their composure, straightening their clothes and attending to the most minute issues with her own. Judging by the way that she managed to not even react, she was accustomed to this. “Lady Hieda,” one of them said, “We really should get back to the manor before—”

“It seems to me,” Komachi said, slinging her now-sheathed sword up to rest across her shoulders, “after we hid the truth from people for this long, they deserve to know whatever we can tell them.”

“No explanation we can give is going to cover this,” Mokou said. “You heard them. They're scared and confused. The best we can do is to make sure that nobody gets hurt until things settle down, and fix this as quickly as possible.”

“Pretty convenient how that approach doesn't require you to justify hiding it in the first place.”

Mokou ignored her, but grimaced. Looking to Hatate, she asked, “Have you made any progress on that? Is this any closer to being fixed?”

“Eh? Hey, don't look at me. As far as I know, Alice is the only one who even actually knows what happened.”

“And nobody knows what she's been up to,” Komachi said. “Haven't seen her in days.”

“What, really?”

“Yeah. Yukari hasn't either. We've been asking around for anyone who might have seen that youkai that Alice talked to the other day, but…”

Komachi trailed off, shooting Mokou a meaningful glance. Mokou shot her an implacable stare right back. “I already told Yukari, whoever that girl was, _I’ve_ never heard of her, and neither has Akyuu. She's a newcomer or something. Or at least enough of a small fry that she was never worth noticing before.”

“Isn't it kind of weird for a small fry to be the one responsible for all of this?”

“Hard to say without knowing what she told Alice.” As Mokou spoke, her gaze drifted toward the line of buildings across the river. Somewhere just beyond them, more voices were being raised in outrage. “… I get the feeling there's going to be a lot of that today.”

“Yeah. Think we should step in? I mean, the village is kind of outside my jurisdiction, but...”

“I'd appreciate it if you did.” Mokou crossed her arms, scowling down at the ground in thought. Finally, she added, “Hatate.”

“Huh?”

“Those miracle powers of yours. Could they do something like this? Or, could they fix it?”

“What you don't think I already thought of that? I mean, I guess it's possible, but... rewriting reality doesn’t really make you think ‘blessing of the gods,’ y’know? Even if I could, something this big would take a lot of juice. I'd be meditating for months just to pull it off.”

Mokou sighed. “I thought so, but it was worth a shot.” The shouting nearby only grew louder. “… it's going to be a long day.”

* * *

Yukari spun her gohei around, paper streamers tracing a near-perfect circle in the air. The slightest hints of pale blue energy trailed behind them, lingering for just a moment. The village's outer walls, too, were a rough circle, arranged by some unknown architect back near Gensokyo's foundation. The two circles resonated with each other, microcosm and macrocosm recognizing their counterparts. The ofuda that she'd hung up in front of her were a part of this system too, five points tracing a circle, along the edge of the village, a larger circle.

Wheels within wheels, just like Ran had taught her.

With one final push, Yukari willed the system: _be sealed_. She thrust her gohei forward. The ofuda in front of her flared with light. A magical circle shimmered in the air. Briefly, the village's southern gate was filled with a sheet of energy. When it faded, the ofuda had been burnt to ashes, their writing now seared on the wood of the gate.

“That's the last of them,” she said. She'd been too focused on her work to notice her surroundings for ten minutes, but she'd already done this three times tonight. By now, she knew that there would be a small crowd of villagers gathered around to gawk at her work. “This won't deter the more powerful youkai, but the lesser sorts who are reckless enough to attack villagers shouldn't be able to get in. As long as you don't go into the countryside, you should be safe.”

The questions that followed were the same ones she'd been answering all day. Yes, everything in the paper was true, as much as she disliked telling people to believe anything that the tengu published. No, she didn't yet have a plan to fix this, and they could thank Alice Kirisame if they found that unacceptable. No, they weren't in immediate danger. Yes, she had apparently been a youkai before, but they were invited to look at the scars from her first youkai hunt if they had doubts about her humanity.

When she'd finally assuaged their fears as well as she could, she slipped out the gate and into the night.

Doing a patrol around the village wasn't strictly necessary, let alone on foot. It was getting late. The string of commotions from earlier were dying down, for the night at least. If something was going on out here, she'd be able to hear it from half a kilometer away.

After today, though, she could use the peace and quiet.

The news had reached the shrine early in the afternoon, barely an hour after Hatate had left. The rest of her day had been nothing but dealing with the fallout. Calming terrified villagers, satiating outraged ones, chasing off youkai who thought rules no longer applied in the face of the potential end of the world... She didn't even want to know what sort of problems were brewing in the _rest_ of Gensokyo right now. Perhaps a show of force would be appropriate tomorrow to make sure that the youkai remembered what happened to those who stepped out of line.

Thankfully though, for now, things seemed calm. The sun had set about half an hour ago, the sky was dimming, and the moon was coming out. A week and a half after the full moon, it had waxed down to a crescent, giving just enough light to see by without encouraging late-night troublemaking. The only signs of life she encountered were a few fishermen slinking home, having apparently missed all of the excitement earlier.

There was just enough light left in the sky to clearly outline Youkai Mountain, with a few hazy columns of smoke showing where youkai had set up camp. The river snaked off toward it, reflecting the last of the sunlight. Somewhere just close enough that she could barely hear them, fairies were playing, filling the air with soft giggles and squeals of outrage. The sound of cicadas hummed beneath it all. Gensokyo was beautiful as always. Seeing it like this, it was hard to believe that catastrophe threatened to engulf it all.

By the time that she came back around to her starting point, she almost wasn't dreading waking up tomorrow.

She decided to make one final trip across the village, though. Let herself be seen, put the villagers' minds at ease. Protecting them had as much to do with making them _feel_ protected as anything else, after all. … the fact that it encouraged them to make more donations was, of course, a happy side effect.

The village's earlier turmoil had calmed. It had been replaced by an air of tired pensiveness. The few people who were still outside stood in small groups, having serious-sounding conversations under their breath. The pubs sounded like they'd drawn bigger crowds than usual, but the sounds coming from within were muted and calm. In the face of such revelations, the initial shock had given away to wondering just what came next.

As she crossed a footbridge and turned into a more residential area, things grew quieter. The houses were shut up, with only the occasional sliver of light leaking out from within. Now and then, a dog barked somewhere in the near distance.

That wasn't the only noise, though. In the relative stillness, she became aware of soft, furtive footsteps following behind her. How interesting.

She paused, and the footsteps paused. When she continued, so did they. She turned and walked through the gap between two walled estates, with trees down the middle and grass underfoot. The footsteps continued behind her, now rustling through the grass.

Toward the end of the clearing, where it opened out onto another street, she spun around and hefted her gohei threateningly. “Would you care to explain yourself?”

There wasn't much lighting here except for the moon, but she could still make out a young boy as he stumbled backward with a shocked squeak. “M-miss Yukari, I'm sorry!”

Yukari hesitated for just a moment before relaxing out of her combat posture. She hadn't realized how tense she had been. “Were you truly that desperate for candy?”

“Well, um, you looked like you were thinkin' really hard, so I didn't wanna bug you, but...”

“I'm afraid that I don't have any on me. Even if you did have some information for me, I couldn't help you.”

“But! But, I got something really good!”

Yukari's first instinct was to scoff and send him away. But, something within her resisted the idea. Showing as little interest as she could, she said, “If you tell me and I think that it's worthwhile, I'll bring you candy the next time I visit the village, then.”

“… two pieces.”

“Oh? Am I a merchant to be haggled with now? You'll get one piece, _if_ I decide that your information is worth it.” Really, she didn't care that much. But she knew children. If she caved to their demands once, pretty soon they'd all be demanding a bucket of candy for the slightest shred of gossip.

The boy pouted and stared off into space, apparently debating whether the delayed gratitude was truly worth it. Finally, he gave a huff and said, “Well, um! Some of the grownups were talking about, about um, how that witch lady with the funny hat keeps comin' into the village to buy mining stuff, an' then she always goes toward the mountain when she leaves. They think there's buried treasure up there or something!”

Yukari had to work very, very hard to keep a grin off of her face. Thankfully, the dark worked in her favor here. “Hmm, well. I _suppose_ that's good enough. You'll get your candy, but for now, why don't you tell me anything else you remember hearing about it?”

* * *

Perched atop a tree, Kanako leaned back and popped her camera open.

The sky was getting dark. Dark enough that she didn’t have much fear about her film getting too exposed. She unspooled it in her hands, one long strip of kappa-made material, and held it up to the sky.

She could just barely make out the negatives in the moonlight. There were even more of them than she’d thought. She hadn’t seen such an eventful news day in years, if not decades. Here, a picture of one man with another pinned up against the wall, his fist pulled back for a punch. There, an aerial photo of Hatate and the head of the Hieda family, surrounded by angry villagers. And, there were at least two dozen such pictures on the roll. It would be enough material for months of normal papers. Perhaps she’d roll them into one big special edition. It didn’t seem like there was going to be any shortage of interesting events in the near future, after all.

Which… didn’t make her as happy as it perhaps should have.

After slipping the film back into the camera, she took off into the air, launching herself across the mountainside with a single firm beat of her wings. She arced down around the slope, heading for a familiar spot—Lower Outpost #3, perched right near the waterfall. Even from hundreds of meters in the air, she knew just where to look to glimpse Sanae, diligently standing watch. She swooped around, shedding some speed, before spiraling down for a landing nearby.

“Oh! Miss Kanako! Good evening.”

“Good evening, Sanae.” Kanako stepped up alongside her, looking out over Gensokyo, herself. From this perspective, there wasn’t much to see at night… at least, for somebody with merely better-than-human sight like herself. Lights dotted the plain below to hint at the outline of the human village, with the occasional pillar of smoke tapering off into the sky. “How does it look down there?”

“I guess things are calmer than they were earlier. Nobody’s had any fights or anything for a while. Yukari was walking around down there, so maybe she made them settle down?”

“Ah. That’s good, then.”

“Mhm! I was afraid that they were going to hurt my guy!”

“… your what?”

Sanae finally glanced back from the view down the mountainside, perking one fuzzy ear up thoughtfully. “Oh, it’s just this game I play to pass the time. Sometimes I pick out a human and just watch what they do for a while, you know?”

“And this is interesting, is it?”

“Yep! I guess it sounds a little embarrassing, but… there’s a lot more going on down there than you’d think. And it’s all so fast! Sometimes it’s only, like, fifteen years from when they’re in diapers to when they have their own kids, and then they might die thirty years later. Like… bam! One quick flash, and they’re gone. I guess maybe I feel like _somebody_ should see it?”

“I see.” Not for the first time, Kanako found herself mystified by Sanae’s mind. “… and how bad was the damage to the village, do you think?”

“Hmm? Oh, the stuff today, right.” The topic seemed to sober Sanae up a bit. She turned a thoughtful glance back toward the land below. “Well… people got really excited about it, but everyone’s okay, I think? There were a few fights, but nobody died or anything.”

“That’s good.” After a pause, Kanako more carefully added, “The great tengu had thought that sort of thing might happen.”

“Huh, really?”

“They still ordered me to publish the article anyway.”

“Oh. Um. I guess they probably had their reasons…?”

“… I’m sure they did. Anyway, thank you for the update. I came here to deliver new orders to you, actually. They passed them on to me this morning, but I’ve been so busy… Starting tomorrow, you’re relieved of guard duty until further notice. They want you to join the patrol that will be scouting out the Forest of Magic and the Road of Reconsideration.”

“Huh? W-wait, am I being demoted or something?!”

“It’s nothing like that. Supposedly, somebody spotted that amanojaku the other day. They want your senses to help with the search.”

“Oh… that’s still going on, huh?”

“So it would seem. I personally think it’s a fool’s errand, but…” Kanako trailed off, her eyes turning toward the sky, where a glimpse of movement caught her eye.

It was hard to make out the shape in the darkness, but one thing was sure—it was moving fast. Kanako had just enough time to take a step back, reaching uncertainly for her hauchiwa before Yukari landed in front of her, in a motion that was somehow simultaneously elegant and forceful.

Sanae, too, had stumbled back. Unlike Kanako, though, she was practiced at standing guard. She’d barely even stopped moving before she rested one hand on her sword and raised her shield. “A-ah, whoa, um! Sorry, but the great tengu have ordered that all outsiders should be kept away from tengu territory tonight…!”

“Well, then perhaps I can help you. I'm looking for an outsider who's been coming to the mountain, myself.” Yukari glanced between the two of them, but her gaze settled onto Kanako. “And how _convenient_ for me to find Kanako here, too. Doesn’t it feel like we’re due for a nice, long talk?”

“Good evening, Yukari,” Kanako said dryly. “What is it that you want?”

“I know that Alice has been coming to the mountain regularly for the past few days. And I suspect that the tengu know what she’s up to.”

“If you want to request that sort of information, you have to go through the proper channels. We aren’t in the business of handing out information for free.”

“Oh? That’s quite a statement, coming from you today of all days. Haven’t you given out far too much information already? I’m sure that a little more won’t hurt.”

Yukari took a step closer to Kanako, inspiring Sanae to scramble to action, halfway inserting herself between the two. “Whoa, no fighting! I think you should probably leave… and it would be a lot better if you do it peacefully, but…”

“In fact,” Yukari said, keeping a sunny smile on her face the entire time, “you gave out information that you shouldn’t have even had access to, let alone distributed. It caused quite a lot of trouble today. Quite a lot of trouble for _me_. I feel like some compensation is in order, and if you two would be so kind as to give me what I want, I won't have to carry your unconscious, ofuda-covered bodies into the tengu village and toss them at Tenma's feet before asking him the same question. So please, let's go for the route that's easiest for the both of us. It’s been a very long day.”

Sanae bristled, her ears perking up and the fur on her tail puffing out. Kanako kept a stony expression, but held out a hand to keep Sanae from attacking just yet. As wolf tengu went, she was gentle and sweet, but even she could only be pushed so far before her honor demanded some retaliation.

“Why do you want Alice?”

“You know, I haven’t decided yet. It’s always so hard to decide how to reconnect with a dear friend after being apart for a while.”

Yukari didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she was lying, so Kanako didn’t bother pretending to believe her. Not that it changed much. She knew enough to piece Yukari’s intentions together. Obviously it was important, or she wouldn’t have flown up here in the dark to demand an answer. And if it was important enough to warrant doing so _today_ , it could really only be about one thing.

Interesting. The tengu had known that Alice was visiting the mountain before her foot had even touched ground the first time, of course, but it had seemed like she was just going some exploring. So, the humans thought there was some clue to this puzzle inside Youkai Mountain…

“Tell her what she wants to know, Sanae.”

Sanae blinked in surprise, looking to Kanako. “Huh?”

“It’s okay, you won’t get in trouble. Please trust me on this.”

Sanae still searched her face for a few seconds before turning uncertainly back to Yukari. “… well, um. She came up here in the morning the past few days? The first day she didn't have much, but the second day she brought up a bunch of ropes and stuff. And a pickaxe! She keeps going into a cave near the base of the mountain. Sometimes that's toward the end of my shift, but I think usually she's in there pretty much all day?”

“And where is this cave?”

“Past the base of the waterfall, about seven hundred meters downstream? Off to the left there's an outcropping with a boulder on top of it. The cave's on the ravine wall below it. It's kind of hidden behind some rubble and trees, but it's there.”

“Wonderful. I’m glad that we were all able to be so reasonable about this.”

As Yukari turned to leave, Kanako cleared her throat. “Yukari, I’m sure you understand that if anybody asks, we had nothing to do with this.”

“Hmm? Oh, of course. I wouldn’t dream of it. Unless I decide that it would be more fun to see you get in horrible trouble with your superiors, in which case I would. I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?”

After shooting back a coy smile, Yukari took off into the night. Sanae relaxed with an audible sigh, and Kanako had to admit, she felt some tension draining from her muscles too.

“So, um,” Sanae said, watching the shrine maiden’s retreating form. “What was that all about?”

“I’m not sure,” Kanako said, finally lowering her gaze from the sky. “But at the moment, I think she’s entitled to a secret or two.”


	12. Chapter 10

Alice drifted back to awareness, and immediately regretted it.

Practically every part of her body was screaming at her. Her legs were sore. Her feet were swollen, with the occasional chafed spot where they rubbed against her boots the wrong way. Her back ached, her arms were scratched up, and she'd even bumped her head at some point. With a groan, she buried her face back into her pillow.

The world wasn't going to make it that easy, though.

“Oh, hey, you're up! I was startin' to get worried,” Rin's voice said, from somewhere.

Rin...

Alice wasn't sure why Rin was here. Or, actually, where 'here' was. She could remember yesterday's long expedition into the caves under Youkai Mountain, her third one in a row. Or, well, she could remember bits and pieces of it. Flashes of underground geography, lit only by her own magic. She could remember picking her way back through the caves after a good ten hours of exploration, shambling from one waypoint to the next. After that... things were hazy.

Presumably she'd gotten out, though. Caves weren't usually this soft.

There was no sense in putting it off any longer. Alice pushed herself over, rolling onto her side and opening her eyes. She immediately squinted against the light that poured in. The window's curtains were parted, and the sun was already high in the heavens. (A bad sign—she should have already been exploring the caves again by now.) And the room around her…

“Mmh...” Alice yawned and rubbed at her eyes. “Why are we in my living room...?”

“‘cuz you’re too heavy to pack up the stairs to your bedroom.”

“I mean, how did I get here?”

“Lots of groanin', mostly. At one point ya tried takin' a nap on a big patch of moss, and I had to drag ya for a bit. You're welcome, by the way. Now sit up, we've gotta get some food in you.”

None of that sounded familiar, but it wasn't like Rin had any reason to lie to her. Ignoring the protests from her body, Alice pushed herself up to sitting and slumped against the back of the chair, looking out over the room. Rin had turned her coffee table into a makeshift serving table, shoving half a dozen ongoing experiments off to the side to make room for her preparations.

When she was ready, Rin whirled around, a tray in hand. In the absence of elegant tableware, she’d loaded breakfast onto the tray that Alice normally used to carry alchemical ingredients and collections of empty glassware. As Rin lowered it into her lap, she caught no fewer than three slices of toast, an omelet made of what _had_ to be turtle eggs, a stack of pancakes, and a small pot of compote.

After setting it down, Rin crossed her arms, staring expectantly down at her. “And I ain't leavin' until you've eaten it all, missy!”

“This seems like a bit much. Did you even leave anything in my pantry?”

“Seems to me like spending all day walking around in caves 'til you're nearly passed out is a bit much, and this is just the reasonable thing to do.”

“Mmh.” Alice was too tired to come up with a coherent protest at the moment. She had to admit, she _was_ hungry. She'd taken a pretty big lunch into the cave with her yesterday, but her bag didn't have enough room to pack dinner too, and as long as she'd been in there... “I think that I'm getting close. I finished mapping out that entire fork that I was exploring before, and a few other branches I've looked at seem like they're all dead ends. At this point, I should only have another few hundred meters to map out.”

“And if you don't find it then, you're just gonna go find some other hole to toss yourself down! Don't deny it.”

“If that's what it takes, then yes, I'll look for another cave system altogether.”

“Hmph.” Rin tried to keep her righteous indignation up, but it faded into worry pretty quickly. She slumped down and glanced aside as she said, “Can't blame me for worrying, though. It ain't like you, not takin' care of yourself. Skinny nerds ain't supposed to go climbing around in caves all day. Makin' me be the responsible one's against the rules or somethin'!”

“Isn't taking care of other people a maid's job, in the end?”

“That ain't the same! Maid's only supposed to be all worried over the _maîtresse de la maison_. … now, if you want me to start callin' you mistress, we can make that work, but I got some ground rules—”

“I don't think that will be necessary.” Alice paused after a bite of pancake and gestured Rin closer. When Rin leaned in, she rested a hand on her cheek, giving it a few fond strokes and shooting her a tired smile. “Please remember that this is all for your sake. I just need to find that castle the amanojaku mentioned, and we can fix all of this. And once it's fixed... we can spend a week laying in bed, and I frankly don't know if I'll ever want to set foot in a cave again.”

Rin looked like she wanted to press the issue, but capitulated with a sigh. She tilted her head to press a soft kiss to Alice's hand before pulling back. “Yeah, I know. But I get all worried when you're down there. Could fall into lava, or get crushed by big rocks or somethin'. Don't get me wrong, they're cool ways to die, but ain't really how I pictured you going.”

“… I should be surprised, but of _course_ you've thought about how I should die.”

“Yeah! … it's gotta be somethin' morbid n' elegant. Like, you drink a big vial of poison, then you lay down with it clasped to your chest and say a poem 'bout life being ephemeral and stuff.”

“And I suppose that then you'd take the same poison?”

“Not just that, I'd see some of the poison on your lips, and kiss ya to get a dose myself, so we could die in each other's arms. Now _that's_ how it oughta go. Anything else's just a wasted opportunity.”

“Well, it might please you to know that I have no intentions of dying any time soon. And the caves beneath Youkai Mountain seem fairly safe, anyway. If I didn't need to squeeze through every hole that appears to lead into another chamber, I wouldn't even be getting scratches. So you see, dear, you have nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, as long as you don't pass out down there. Seemed pretty close last night.” Rin huffed. “But you're goin' down again today, aren't you?”

“Of course. Somebody still needs to save Gensokyo, after all.”

* * *

After a few days of delving into the caves, Alice had worked out a general approach to it.

It wasn't a _good_ approach, but it worked. She was sure that if she spent some time experimenting with the problems that she was facing, she could find some way to magically map out the caves. Time was the one thing she didn't have, though.

Her backpack contained a meal, of course—this time, packed with love by Rin, so she was already equal parts curious and dreading what she'd find when she opened it up. There were also a few potions that would explode into phosphorescent fire upon impact, which she could toss down pits to get a glimpse at whatever was hidden in their depths. There was a coil of rope, because even with the ability to fly, she'd found a few spaces that were too tight for it to be viable. There were two healing potions, in case she got really unlucky. There was a battered hardhat that she'd found at Kourindou years back, which she was now learning to appreciate. There was a small pouch of fuel for the mini-hakkero, because using it as a light source for ten hours burned through a surprising amount.

And, there was a bundle of lightly-enchanted chalk, wrapped in wax paper.

For an experienced magician, making chalk that would glow for a few days wasn't anything difficult. She'd added a bit more power, making them more durable and brighter, and she was glad that she'd gone the extra mile. As she slipped into the cave and started descending into the darkness, she barely even needed to think about her route. The symbols in front of her gave clear instructions, leading her way into the depths.

She passed multiple openings that branched into other forks of the cave, and ignored them all. Each one was marked with an oversized X, flagging it as one that she'd already explored to the best of her abilities. Most of these still had a few narrow crevices that she couldn't squirm through or, in one case, a short underwater passageway. She wasn't worried about any of these. If she was looking for a castle, it didn't seem like it would be hidden through a crack that even an inchling would find tight.

A few hundred meters beneath the surface, she had to make her way down a vertical shaft, carefully navigating its crooked descent. It ended in a larger cavern with almost a dozen paths splitting off from it. Most of them, thankfully, were already X'd out. One had a question mark, showing that she'd explored it pretty well but that it was probably worth revisiting later. The last one, though, had nothing above the entrance. More marks along the walls led deeper in. She followed them.

As she descended, the air around her started growing warmer. Youkai Mountain was volcanic, after all.

The tunnel snaked downward. Here and there, she’d already marked off a side path. The chalk marks were fresher here, some of them barely more than twelve hours old. As she moved into unseen territory, the tunnel around her started becoming less predictable. Cracks thicker than her waist split the walls and floor in places. In others, piles of rubble were stacked so high that she had to squeeze past them against the ceiling. She paused by these, putting marks on the walls to direct her attention to the gaps that she'd wriggled through. The last thing she wanted was to get trapped down here.

Still, the tunnel continued onward.

She tried to guess how far underground she was now. It had to at least be several hundred meters. Where there was dust on the floor, it lay smooth and flat, without a hint of being disturbed by air flow or feet. She was probably the first person to come this way in decades, if not centuries. Possibly ever, but it would be unusual if no enterprising kappa had ever delved this deep in search of ore.

And here, the tunnel had collapsed.

Alice came to a stop, shining the mini-hakkero down to scan the space in front of her. The tunnel hadn't just collapsed—it looked like something had snapped it in half. A fissure split the floor in front of her. It was almost a meter wide at its base, and as it ran up the walls, it broadened. Near the top, it was probably wider than she was tall. Beyond the crack, the tunnel sloped sharply downward. Like the entire earth had been shifted downward by some titanic force.

She paused to shine the hakkero into the gaps, but she couldn't see much except for rubble. Cautiously, she leaned forward and gave the dislodged section of tunnel a probing shove with her foot. It seemed firm. After gathering her courage, Alice took a step onto it and started creeping her way downward.

Soon, she saw the end of the tunnel.

It really did just… end. Jagged rocks marked out its edge. They jutted out into what appeared to be an empty void. As she crept closer she noticed a dim light from below, visible in the slowly-drifting dust that it illuminated.

She approached the edge, and a quick glimpse downward assured her that she'd found what she was looking for. Alice leapt into the air, took flight, and hovered out into the void in front of her.

It was _massive_. She had to turn the mini-hakkero up to 15% power to even generate enough light to see the far wall, hundreds of meters away. The walls were covered in the marks of violence. Here and there, pillars of rock had toppled over only to end up leaning against the far side of the cavern. Deep gouges marred the stone, left behind by unimaginably powerful shearing forces. The ceiling above looked like it had started as a cave-in that managed to end with several slabs of rock falling in just the right way to support each other. Even the ceiling had to be at least a hundred meters underground. The collapse had to be ancient.

And below...

The first thing she noticed was the glow. It was like flying above a roiling sea of light, with a rough surface of blue energy bulging and crackling beneath her. Like the distortion that they'd seen in the human village, but so, so much bigger. Big enough to encompass half of the human village, perhaps. At the edges, it clipped cleanly through the cavern's walls, seeming to extend through the solid rock itself.

Inside of it was a castle. A miraculously intact castle, despite its descent through half a kilometer of earth, atop a massive pile of rubble. Strangest of all, though, was that the castle was upside down.

* * *

Alice landed on a ledge about ten meters above the surface of the distortion. It gave her enough light to see by, so she settled in and had lunch. Thankfully, Rin's food offerings had leaned more toward 'fancy' than 'macabre' this time. There were miniature sandwiches on croissants, a selection of fruit cut into elaborate shapes, and a few little heart-shaped chocolates for dessert. And they were shaped like abstract heart symbols, not anatomically correct hearts. Rin really must have been concerned for her if she was playing it that tasteful. She'd have to return the favor when she got back to the surface.

She considered her course of action as she ate. This was obviously what she was looking for. It wasn’t like there was any chance there were two underground castles down here. There was at least one open door near the castle's base... or what would be its base if it were right-side-up, at least. Getting inside wouldn't be the hard part. It was a big castle, though, and she was apparently looking for an inchling... and the entire thing was wrapped up in that anomaly. Komachi had stepped into one for a minute or two, and she'd been nearly stunned when she staggered out. If she had to go on an extended search in there…

Her first impulse was to turn back and get some backup, but decided against it. As strange as everything had seemed while Komachi was inside that bubble in the village, she didn't have any faith in the ability of a rope to haul her out if things went wrong. If she did get stuck in there, the last thing she wanted was for Rin to dive in and meet the same fate. There weren't a lot of preparations she could make for a journey like this, and she'd already enacted the few that she could come up with. Her outfit had half a dozen warding talismans sewn into it. She’d gotten a blessing for luck from the Moriya shrine. She’d applied an enchantment to her dress that would, according to the book in which she'd found it, 'protect the bodily humours from intrusion most foul by the miasmas of other worlds.' She wasn't sure if a field of general non-causality counted as a 'miasma,' but it couldn't hurt. She got the feeling that if she could avoid even 1% of it, that would be worthwhile.

So. Nothing to do but dive in.

Alice stepped up to the edge, looking down at the chaos below her. She left her backpack behind—she didn't need it slowing her down. After some consideration, she reluctantly left the mini-hakkero too, sitting it on the ground next to her other belongings. She felt almost naked without it, but she didn't expect a fight down there, and the light from the anomaly was bright enough to see by. If she got confused or... shuffled around through timelines or something, she really didn't want to abandon it in there by accident.

She finished off the water in her canteen. Might as well make sure she wasn't going to get thirsty while she was down there. She tightened the laces on her boots, and otherwise made sure that she was ready to move as quickly as possible. And, taking flight, she dove in.

The blue haze didn’t have a sharply-defined boundary. As it thickened around her, though, she could feel a strange tingle run through her body, followed by a few visual distortions, like she was seeing the world through running water. And then, reality pulled apart to reveal new facets, like an origami crane unfolding.

Half a dozen castles wobbled below her, struggling against each other to assert themselves. One of them shuddered in place and began rising into the air. She was far enough away to dart out of its path, but she could still feel the massive amount of wind that it was displacing. Ten thousand tons of chiseled rock floated up with the ease of a balloon… and then faded away, vanishing from existence. Below, the tangle of other castles was still vibrating in place.

She was starting to get an idea of just what she was contending with.

The air dragged at her skin, as a dozen superimposed versions of her body tugged in different directions. She was descending in fits and bursts, jittering through the air like a cart slipping in the mud. If she moved too quickly, she caught the occasional glimpse of the back of her own head.

The world spun. Suddenly, sunlight flooded the chamber, with the cavern ceiling overhead replaced by an open sky. Low whistling noises pierced the silence. Too late, she saw a barrage of tiny arrows arcing toward her. Hundreds of pinpricks jabbed her flesh, peppering her skin with blood, and she squealed in shock. On one of the upside-down balconies of the castle below her, a contingent of inchling archers cheered in victory, already nocking more arrows.

And then they all vanished, as did her wounds, leaving her in peace. The sky was gone, and she was once more in a lifeless cavern.

Right. She really needed to get this over with as quickly as possible.

As soon as she was close enough to grab onto the castle, she did so. She dragged herself down through the doorway, coming to a landing inside. She was standing on the ceiling, of course. Despite presumably being made for inchlings, the castle's interior was full-sized. Lanterns were spaced across the floor above her, their paper looking as pristine as it had been on the day the castle was sealed away. As waves of change flickered across her reality, they bloomed into light, snuffed out, or decayed into dust. The quick flashes illuminated her surroundings in short bursts.

Far worse, though, were the people.

She was barely a few steps inside before she saw them. Dozens of inchlings appeared on the floor above her, strolling along and chatting with each other as they went about their days. As she watched, one of them turned to look down—up?—at her in shock. Just as he opened his mouth to cry out, the scene faded, leaving only the bare floor above.

More inchlings flickered in and out of existence, on both the ceiling _and_ the floor. Here, a small group of them appeared, pulling a tiny cart laden with stone blocks that they'd apparently mined from the castle's walls. There, a lone inchling walked along, trudging through knee-deep dust and gawking at their surroundings.

She caught a brief glimpse of Seija following along behind the inchling. Seija shot her the briefest concerned glance before she, too, faded.

The castle burst into flames. A backdraft roared out of a corridor in front of her, forcing her to stumble back. The ceiling creaked beneath her, the wood weakened from burning. Her foot burst through, she started to fall…

Until she was once again standing in the empty castle, in safe, cool air.

One of her legs vanished. She toppled to the floor, clawing her way forward while dragging the stump of her thigh behind her. When it reappeared as abruptly as it had vanished, a deafening roar ran through the castle, followed by deep, shuddering groans of structural stress. Water rushed in from every opening. She pulled herself down flat against the ceiling, and the water still slammed into her body with the force of a falling boulder. Her lungs screamed for air. She had to claw at the stone to resist being dragged off.

Back to the empty castle, without a drop of water on her.

Alice grit her teeth and pushed forward, fighting her way through warring reality after reality. She kept her eyes on her goal, doing her best to shrug off every distraction that the collapsing causality could throw at her. When she was knocked to the ground, she got back up. When the environment grew too hazardous to push through, she huddled down and protected herself as well as she could.

By the time she reached the first stairwell, it felt like she'd been at it for a month. For all she knew, she had been.

The stairs, too, were upside-down. They ran above her, while below her there was a straight drop down to the next floor. She took it, floating downward. When she landed, her legs briefly quivered, fighting to support her. The trip was already taking its toll, and still no sign of her inchling.

As she moved toward the doorway, another figure stepped through from the other side. They both came to a sudden stop, mere centimeters short of plowing into each other. Meeting another human down here was a bit of a shock in the first place. Her surprise only grew, though, as she realized that the face she was looking into was her own.

It was her, alright. The same outfit, and a face that she saw every day in the mirror. The other Alice was hunched over, though, holding something clutched to her chest. Her hair was mussed. She looked haggard and spent. She glanced up, shooting Alice a weary, but amused, look. “I suppose that means I'm almost out, then...”

“What...?” Alice's voice echoed around her, taking on a dozen different tones, with a few other words mixed in there for variety. She felt, disturbingly, her teeth shift around in her mouth before returning to their normal positions. “What do you mean?”

The other Alice gave a soft, delirious laugh under her breath. And, she vanished.

Alice stared at the spot where she'd stood for several seconds. Tentatively, she reached forward and swiped her hand through the air where her twin had stood. She found nothing.

After another few seconds, she steeled herself and pressed onward.

* * *

Four floors went by. Each was thankfully smaller than the last one as the castle tapered toward its summit. At least, they were smaller except when they _weren't_ , because the floor was suddenly a kilometer across, or the walls had collapsed into piles of rubble, or on one occasion, because the entire castle had crumbled into pieces and fallen away, leaving her briefly, horrifyingly, hovering in the air in an empty void.

But apart from _those_ occasions, the floors were smaller.

When inchlings flickered into existence now, they were wearing nicer clothes, with fewer soldiers mixed in. She was reaching the higher levels of the castle, where the nobles would be housed. Crossing a room, she suddenly found it filled with inchling-sized engines of war: hundreds of toy-sized trebuchets, battering rams, and siege towers. She tripped over one of the latter, sending her stumbling, and her other foot smashed an antiquated-looking catapult into kindling. The inchling guards had just enough time to shoot her looks of incredulous terror before they vanished.

It was wearing on her. There was no sense of any baseline reality underlying all of this. She only saw strange alternatives, none of which were rooted directly in the world she knew. How could she be certain that she was even still _in_ the world she knew? Komachi had returned, but there was no guarantee that Alice wouldn't step outside again to find herself in a different Gensokyo.

Or hovering above the ocean. Or atop a flaming castle. Or in the middle of a siege. Or any one of the hundreds of other concerning possibilities that she'd seen.

She could only press on and hope that it would work out, even as her strength and sanity eroded around her.

And, finally, she dropped down to the final floor.

This floor, this one was almost entirely empty. A hallway ran around the perimeter, and the center was a single large room, with all of its doors left open. It had obviously been intended as the bedroom of the castle's lord. A luxurious bed and a vanity sat on the ceiling, both looking as untouched as they day they were abandoned. On the floor, a scattered assortment of more modest items suggested that somebody had set up camp here for a few days.

Between the two, hovering in the air, was an inchling.

The fog of blue energy was thicker around her. Tendrils of it snaked outward, exiting right through the walls. The girl's limbs were sprawled like she was floating in a lake. Her eyes were open and her expression blank, staring out into the world.

If she was dead and this was all for nothing, Alice felt like she was just going to collapse in despair on the spot. “Hello? I-I'm here...” She went quiet for a moment as she took a few more steps forward, fighting against reality. Her voice continued echoing around her. “… here to rescue you.”

The girl showed no sign of reacting. Step by step, Alice approached, pushing past suddenly-splintered holes in the floor, sidestepping phantasmal courtiers, and at one point, staggering along as she suddenly found herself nearly a meter shorter. When she reached the inchling, she reached out, gently cupping the girl in one hand.

She felt warm. That was a good sign. She was probably _alive_ , at least. She was still catatonic, though, and Alice could only hope that her mind hadn't been fried from spending so long submerged in this chaos.

“I'm here...” Alice's voice was weaker now. She was really going to have to save her energy on the trip back. “Here to take you home...”

Cupping the girl to her chest, she turned around and headed back toward the surface.

She floated up to the next floor, and found a pack of wild dogs running rampant, being fought off by bloodied inchling warriors. Screams of terror and pain filled the air around her. A dog caught one by the back of her robe and picked her up, shaking her violently while she flailed. When the scene vanished, the floor was rotting, covered in thick vines and wild mushrooms.

She floated up another floor. Here, there was nobody around, but all of the windows were wide open. Out them, she could see that they were hundreds of meters in the air. The landscape below was recognizable as Gensokyo, but it was sterile and lifeless. There was nothing to be seen but bare rock and arid soil. This view lasted uncomfortably long, only fading out several minutes later as she was approaching the stairwell.

As she crossed the next floor, reality started bouncing around so quickly that she could hardly keep track. Something slammed into her back with enough force to send her staggering, knocking the wind out of her. She only barely managed to keep the inchling in hand and avoid falling over atop her. Loose garments drifted around on the floor, then vanished to be replaced by a serene view of a calm, normal castle, with light shining in the windows.

She was in a daze now. Her thoughts were in shambles. It was hard to remember why she'd come here. She just clung on to one fact, repeating it to herself like a mantra: She had to get out. She _had_ to.

As she crossed the next floor, she suddenly found herself pressed down with extra force, as the building shuddered around her. Wind whistled past. The castle was rocketing up into the air. Somewhere above her, its highest point smashed through the stone ceiling above with a sound like the apocalypse. Stones the size of houses tumbled past. The castle rumbled as it continued forcing its way up through the earth, threatening to disintegrate around her.

Everything returned to normal.

Wait, no. Only mostly normal. Something shoved against her fingers from the inside, and Alice cautiously parted them to find that the inchling she was holding was now an indignant sparrow. The bird clawed at her palms, trying to shove its way to freedom, while Alice frantically tightened her grasp. It gave a few outraged chirps up at her...

And then it was an inchling again. She tried not to think about how many times things like that had happened to her during this journey. There were _definitely_ a few spots where she felt like she'd skipped forward a few seconds with no sense of the intervening time.

She dragged herself toward the stairway, the path up to the final floor and the exit to the entire castle.

As she approached the doorway, another Alice stepped forward. The Alice froze, staring at her in shock.

Alice suppressed a delirious chuckle, looking over herself. “I suppose that means I'm almost out, then...”

* * *

Yukari raised the lantern, frowning at the pile of rubble in front of her.

This was really more trouble than she'd anticipated. All of her previous subterranean excursions had been spacious. Poorly-lit, but spacious. Today, she'd already had to squeeze over or around three piles of rubble.

And now a fourth was standing in front of her. Unbelievable. And worse, near the ceiling of the cave, she could see another glowing mark, an arrow pointing in either direction to draw attention to a space just big enough to crawl through. The path had to continue past this.

With great annoyance, Yukari clambered up the pile of rubble, reached through the gap to rest the lantern on the other side, pushed her body through, picked up the lantern, and carefully picked her way down the far side of the pile. After brushing her skirt off, she continued down the tunnel.

This whole thing was proving to be entirely more effort than she'd anticipated. Her only solace, the one thing that made it bearable, was the fact that Alice had already passed through. Not only did that mean that Yukari was saved quite a bit of effort—after the first couple of dead ends, she'd figured out most of Alice's library of glowing symbols—but it also meant that Alice had needed to go through this and more. Each X'd out tunnel was at least an hour or two that Alice had spent fruitlessly slogging through a chilly cave, scuffing her knees on rubble and stepping over chasms.

She was suffering, but Alice had suffered so much more. Schadenfreude was a cold comfort, but right now she'd take what she could get.

The tunnel snaked on. After another half-hour of walking, she had to stop to refuel the lantern, and silently thanked Kosuzu for throwing in fuel when she'd borrowed it. If Kosuzu had known that she was using the lantern to race Alice for a treasure, she might have been more hesitant. It almost made Yukari feel guilty for taking advantage of her generosity. Almost.

After a short while, footprints in the dust on the floor assured her that she was still heading in the right direction. A bit farther, and she came to a spot where the tunnel suddenly thrust downward, with cracks on the walls suggesting that it had been physically torn in half.

She stepped past them, hovered in the chamber beyond, and stared down at the inverted, glowing castle beneath her.

Even by Gensokyo standards, this was pretty weird. Yukari tried to make sense of it, and figure out how an upside-down castle would end up smashing through the ground and landing in a cavern near Former Hell, but no explanations were coming to her. None of this looked recent, though. Whatever she was looking for, it had to be in there.

Yukari descended, uncertainly approaching the wall of blue energy. If Alice had come this way, was she in there? Surely this was the destination. The _inverted, glowing, subterranean castle_ couldn't just be a curious landmark. If Alice had gone in there, was she even alive? Had she turned back to come up with a plan B?

Just as she was about to reach a decision, something caught her eye below.

She hovered down to it. There, on a ledge, was a discarded backpack. The condition was good enough to assure her that it had been left recently. Just in case she had her doubts, though, sitting next to it was the mini-hakkero.

How convenient.

This changed her options a bit. After a few minutes of thought, she decided to wait. Moving back from the ledge, she settled in against the wall of the cavern and extinguished her lantern, leaving her only in the light of the blue glow below. Soon enough, her vision had even adjusted until she could see by it just fine.

The castle flickered occasionally, shifting to some other form of itself, just like the storefronts in the village had. Not as quickly, though. Did large objects change more slowly? Were they more stable? Or did the doubtlessly-extensive history of something so grand help to anchor its resistance? She'd have to discuss it with Akyuu later. The Hakurei shrine maiden couldn't afford to remain nearly ignorant of the dangers that Gensokyo was facing.

All in all, she was waiting for at least an hour before her solitude was disrupted. Without warning, Alice hovered up from the chaos below. She didn’t look injured. The expression on her face, though, was something between horror and absolute bone-deep exhaustion. She stared out blankly, barely even seeming to register Yukari's presence. She took a single robotic step forward, getting herself a safe distance from the ledge. And then, she collapsed.

As Alice fell forward, she just barely managed to extend one arm, saving something clasped against her chest from getting crushed.

Yukari approached her, not sure what she expected to find. A magical tome, maybe. Some powerful artifact. What Alice was holding, though, was none of those. Laying in her palm was a very, very small girl, sleeping soundly with her legs curled against her chest.

Alice herself showed the barest signs of consciousness as Yukari approached. She was too stunned or tired to respond, but her eyes were tracking Yukari’s movements. Good. Yukari met her eyes as she knelt down to Alice’s level. “I did tell you that we'd be seeing each other again soon, did I not?” Gently, she scooped the tiny girl up in her own hands, moving as cautiously as she could to avoid disturbing her slumber. “Thank you, Alice. You've saved me a great deal of trouble.”


	13. Chapter 11

This wasn't quite the triumphant victory that Yukari had envisioned.

Flying halfway across Gensokyo with a small person in her hands was awkward enough to begin with. By the time that she reached the shrine, the girl was still comatose. A brief inspection didn't turn up any signs of injury. As far as Yukari could tell, she was either exhausted, traumatized from whatever she'd gone through inside that castle, or both.

So, Yukari did what she could for her. She found the softest towel that she owned and folded it up into a makeshift mattress. Atop it, she tucked the girl in beneath a handkerchief. It didn't look all that comfortable, but she was no craftsman, and it was nearly nightfall. If this turned out to be a prolonged arrangement, she'd have to visit Marisa to get some doll-sized furniture.

She debated whether she should try to feed the girl. Pour a single droplet of water into her mouth and try to coax her to swallow it, perhaps. Her self-driven education had never delved into medicine beyond herbalism and anatomy though, and she had no idea if she could do it safely. It was probably best to not risk drowning the one lead that she'd found. If it came down to that, she'd have to make a visit to Eientei and hope that Patchouli wasn't stingy with the bill. The shrine had earned a decent amount from the festival, but not enough to cover a surgery or something.

Having done everything that she could think of, she settled in with a book to keep vigil.

It was a long night.

No amount of tea could fight off her tiredness forever, but it made a valiant effort nonetheless. She went through three pots of it, almost always keeping a steaming cup by her side. While she liked her sleep, the youkai-hunting lifestyle had forced her to adapt to the occasional interruption. They'd been a bit more than 'occasional' lately, though. Stress alone had gifted her with half a dozen wakeful nights.

Late at night, somewhere around 2 AM, she could swear that she saw the girl stir in her sleep. She leaned in for a closer look, not even daring to breathe. After a minute passed without movement, she wrote it off as a tired hallucination.

The sun came up. Yukari's head felt foggy and numb, but her body at least begrudgingly accepted that she was supposed to be awake as it passed back into her usual waking hours. She made breakfast. She dared to step outside for long enough to take care of a few small chores. When she returned, she found that her tiny patient had shifted positions while she was gone.

After two hours of increasingly drowsy observation, the girl finally gave a soft groan and lifted her head from the towel-mattress, squinting against the light as she looked around. As soon as her gaze settled onto Yukari, she froze up, her eyes widening.

“Good morning,” Yukari said, inclining her head.

The girl opened her mouth to say something, but only a raspy wheeze came out.

Oh. She was parched. Yukari hadn't considered the problem of how to get food and drink to somebody who would fit inside most of her rice bowls. After some quick thinking, she grabbed one of the cheaper bottles of outside world sake that had passed through the barrier as offerings. The cap was a twist-off type, and after rinsing it out, it was... okay, still far too large for a cup, but at least merely bucket-sized compared to the tiny girl.

And despite being like a bucket compared to her, the girl managed to drink most of it. Soft gulps filled the air as she tilted it further and further back, and she only seemed to stop when she was running out of breath. After letting out a gasp of relief, she shot Yukari a wary glance. “What… w-what's a giant want from me?”

“My name is Yukari Hakurei. I rescued you from an... anomaly in an inverted castle underground.”

“What's that supposed to mean? I—” The girl trailed off, a look of horror and realization on her face. “I _was_ in the castle. I... I died, didn’t I? But then wolves ate me, and… um… my hands fell off? What the heck happened?”

“I was hoping that you knew. I'm afraid that I just found you like that.”

The girl looked increasingly distressed now. Rubbing at her forehead, she bent over, staring at her handkerchief-blanket as she tried to gather her thoughts. “It feels so long ago, though...”

“You may have been like that for several weeks, yes.”

“And you pulled me out of there?”

“I did.”

She grimaced, conflict evident on her face. Finally, she scooted to the edge of her tiny bed and slipped down to the floor. Kneeling, she bowed until her forehead touched the floor. “I'm sorry for my rudeness earlier. I, Shinmyoumaru Sukuna of the inchlings, owe you a great debt.”

Yukari smiled. “Think nothing of it, miss Sukuna. You sound like you've been through quite a lot. And you're welcome to stay in the shrine for as long as it takes you to recover. Now then. I'm sure you're hungry, and you could probably use some time to collect yourself before any exertion. But afterward, I'd be very interested to hear how you ended up down there.”

* * *

Alice trudged onward, with one hand on the tunnel wall to help keep her oriented.

Yukari had been kind enough to leave her lantern behind. Light wasn’t the issue. After all of the weirdness in the castle, Alice’s body felt like somebody had hollowed it out. Flying up from the ledge to the tunnel leading to the surface had taken most of what little strength she had left. She was barely strong enough to hold the lantern in the first place.

But she _had_ to get out. That fact was still lodged into her brain. At least her thoughts were starting to slowly recover, courtesy of a reality that didn’t change shapes around her every few seconds. She still found it difficult to regain her trust in causality just yet. Every slight change in the tunnel’s layout made her pause, warily eyeing it to see what bizarre thing might leap out at her. Only after a good ten occasions like this did her fear started slowly receding.

She’d just started to convince herself that things might almost be back to normal when she heard voices approaching.

At first, they were distant enough to be indistinct. Echoing down hundreds of meters of tunnel, she couldn’t make out much except for the fact that she wasn’t alone down here. After the day she’d had, that wasn’t very reassuring. Her free hand patted absently for the mini-hakkero, and she tried not to think about the fact that her fingers were shaking. Pressing herself in against the wall, she dimmed the lantern’s light as far as she could and waited.

Minutes passed. The voices were very gradually drawing closer. As they grew louder, she was able to make out a bit more of them. And, finally, a peak in the conversation let her identify one of the speakers—Rin was down here.

“Rhhh…” She opened her mouth to shout for her, but her throat was painfully dry. She hadn’t even realized. How long had it been since she had anything to drink? Her time in the castle still felt like it had been… weeks, maybe. Had she escaped only to die of dehydration down here?

Her canteen was empty. All she could manage was a pathetic wheeze. She was going to have to improvise.

Opening the lantern back up, she found a rock on the cave floor, and gave it the firmest smack she could against the wall. The clack of stone-on-stone echoed down the tunnel. A second later, the conversation came to an abrupt stop.

That was a good sign, probably. She gave the rock a few more swings, smacking it against the wall with each one. She felt clumsy and weak, but it got the job done. After a few more seconds of hesitation, the voices started approaching again.

It still felt like it was taking ages. In the stillness of the cave, there was no way to track the time. She clung to their distance voices to at least anchor her in the moment, helping her ignore the movement that her imagination kept insisting lurked in the darkness. It took all of her self-control to not look back over her shoulder every few seconds. Things wouldn’t just appear behind her for no reason. Not out here, at least. She had to keep reminding herself of that.

The voices came closer.

“… told ya, it’s right up here! C’mon, this way!”

Komachi’s voice responded. “How can you even tell? Everything echoes forever down here.”

“I got a hunch, is all!”

Alice opened her mouth again. After clearing her throat a few times, she was able to recover her voice enough to wheeze, “Rin,” just above normal speaking volume.

“… wait, did ya hear that?”

Rin hadn’t even finished saying that before her footsteps picked up. Alice could hear them now, drawing closer and closer. It still felt agonizingly long before light appeared in the distance, shining against the wall of the tunnel. Rin wasn’t far behind, stepping out around a bend. She froze up when she saw Alice… then vanished. Suddenly, she was tackled up against Alice, squeezing her so hard that it was uncomfortable, burying her face in against a shoulder. “Th-there ya are! I was so worried! Dummy! Big stupid dummy! I didn’t even know if…! I-if. Y’know.”

Rin trailed off with a sniffle. Alice carefully sat down the lantern, then wrapped her arms around her. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to ignore how raspy her voice sounded.

“You better be!” Rin gave a few more sniffles before pulling back, smiling at her past teary eyes. “You… you look pretty rough, though. A-are you okay, or…?”

“Mmh. I’m fine, really. I could… use some water, though.”

“Water? Oh, we didn’t really bring none down with us…”

Figured. It had been worth a shot, though. “How did you even… know? To find me. That I was in… trouble.” Forming sentences was hard, and it was a bit harder to sort out whether she should know the answer to that question. Remembering everything that had happened today was difficult, when it felt like the answer was less of a timeline and more of a flowchart. And it was probably best to keep that part about bumping into _herself_ a secret.

“Yukari told us that you were down here. Said you’d collapsed or something, made it sound real serious. I’m… I’m real glad you’re okay, alright?”

“Me too.”

“So, yeah, hey, nice to see you’re alright,” Komachi said, approaching the two from further down the tunnel. As she came closer, she raised her own lantern to get a better look at Alice. “What happened down there, anyway?”

Alice opened her mouth to answer, but no clear response was coming to her. She remembered the anomaly. The inverted castle. She’d gone inside, and...

… and...

… and whatever came next was fragmentary, like vague memories of a fever dream. She'd struggled to hold a bird in her hands. She'd almost drowned. She'd seen Gensokyo stripped of all life. She could remember these bits and pieces, but there was nothing tying them together. There was no narrative for her to seize onto to make sense out of them. Just like a dream that faded upon waking, though, she got the feeling that there was something urgently important there…

“Don’t you worry about it right now, alright?” Rin said, obviously trying to hide her concern. “How ‘bout we get you home so you can get some rest?”

* * *

“And you trusted an amanojaku?” Yukari asked.

“Yes, I trusted her! She was my friend!”

“An amanojaku isn't somebody that you _trust_. If she was being nice to you, she was using you at best.”

“She was my _friend_ ,” Shinmyoumaru repeated, stubbornly.

“Of course. Please, continue.”

Shinmyoumaru huffed, gazing off into the distance as she gathered her thoughts. “And she was right! As long as anyone can remember, the inchlings have just been pushed around by big people! Even if she was lying about everything else, I'd still want to mess up your awful society! The strong have trampled on the weak for way too long.”

“And instead, you just made yourself a bigger target. Well done.” Yukari gently pushed Shinmyoumaru over with a single fingertip to prove her point. “Why go as far as to invert society, then? Why not build yourself an army and take what you wanted, or simply make yourself the queen of Gensokyo? It seems much more straightforward that way.”

“You sound just like Seija. She wanted to make all the weak youkai stronger, and let them take over Gensokyo by force. But that sounds like a lot of work, right? If you have a mallet that can grant wishes, you should just skip to the end!”

“It doesn't seem like cutting out the steps in between worked out that well for you.”

“Well, it should have!”

“So what went wrong? Did you word your wish poorly?”

“The Miracle Mallet doesn't work like that! It _knows_ what I want. But. Um. Hmm. When I made the wish, the mallet felt weird. Like it was going to explode in my hands or something. It doesn't have unlimited power or anything. I think, maybe, making a new Gensokyo is more than it can do?” Shinmyoumaru huffed, apparently sulking over her inability to rewrite reality at will. “And we did notice that sometimes, things get weird after a wish, like the mallet's trying to punish me or something...”

“'Punish you.' So you didn't simply try to rewrite reality. You tried to do so with a monkey's paw. What next? Did you make any contracts with demons? Performed some rituals that you found on ancient scrolls, perhaps?”

“Usually the side effects weren’t very bad! Things moving around when they shouldn’t, stuff like that! … well, okay, I did only make little wishes before this one, but still!”

“And what _were_ the side effects this time?”

“Well… it isn’t like I saw what happened after the wish. I was stuck in that castle. Have things been moving around?”

“No, but reality is falling apart. That's _why_ you were stuck in the castle for so long.”

“Reality, um...? What, is that what that was?!”

“So it would seem.”

“Well, the mallet's never done that before, so it's probably not my fault.” Shinmyoumaru huffed and crossed her arms. “Um, unless... if it couldn't make all the changes I wanted and was going to mess up anyway...”

“It might have decided that leaving you in a decaying universe was enough of a punishment?”

Shinmyoumaru shifted in place, glancing guiltily aside. “Well. I mean. It _would_ be a really big cost.”

“The appropriate sort of cost for rewriting reality on a whim, you might say? And I'm sure, miss Sukuna, we can agree that if you caused this, it's only appropriate for you to take responsibility for fixing it?”

“How would I even fix something like that, though? I guess I could try using the mallet, but if it backfired again, that could mess things up even more...”

“Perhaps you didn’t understand the part about reality collapsing? Things can hardly get worse. It might be a last resort, but we have to consider the option at this point.”

“I guess pretty much anything _would_ be better than… that mess back there. Well, if you’re okay with it, it’s worth a shot. Where's the mallet at, anyway?”

Yukari paused. “I had assumed that you were carrying it. Have you checked your pockets?”

“Oh, no. The mallet's...!” Shinmyoumaru spread her arms as wide as she could, then gestured to indicate that it was much, much bigger. “It came from an oni. It's giant-sized!”

“Then... where _is_ the mallet? You must have some idea.”

“It was in my hand when everything went weird. It wasn't on the floor in the castle or something, was it?”

“… no. It wasn't.” Yukari was just going to have to trust that Alice, being the thorough witch that she was, would have grabbed any magical artifact that appeared to be part of a matching set with this girl.

“Um. Then. Hmm.” Shinmyoumaru's face fell. “Probably... Seija has it?”

* * *

Komachi Konpaku, the final scion of the Konpaku clan, inheritor of its many illustrious-ish combat arts, rightful owner of the Roukanken, took a deep breath and steadied her weapon. Facing down her foe, she allowed herself to see all of the motions she’d need to make, dozens of practiced successive movements. She tightened her grip. And, with a single gasp of exertion, she flew into motion.

For a mere moment, the air in front of her was a flurry of blows. She finished with a flourish, swiping in a broad upward arc that left little doubt about the fact that she was showing off. Dust exploded outward around her target, still following the trajectory of her individual swipes.

Never in history had one coffee table been so thoroughly cleaned.

Komachi had never seen one before, but Alice had an honest-to-goodness feather duster. Rin was almost certainly to blame, somehow. Still, though—surprisingly handy little thing.

It had taken about forty-five minutes, but she’d managed to tidy up Alice’s front room a bit. Nothing too dramatic, but she’d straightened up the piles of books, put away the few discarded garments laying around, cleaned the windows, refilled the oil in her lantern, and now, dusted. The place looked a lot tidier than it had when she’d arrived.

She knew from experience that this sort of thing was helpful, when dealing with the kind of person who didn’t take the best care of themselves. Yukari had given her _tons_ of opportunity to practice, after all. It was more work than she did around Hakugyokurou some days, though, let alone for free. Time for a break. After giving a few final swipes of the feather duster, she hung it back where she’d found it and headed upstairs.

The upper floor of the cottage was all one big room, which Alice had made into her bedroom. Or, in theory, it was a bedroom. In practice, there were two bookshelves, a workbench, an armchair, and a reading desk along the walls, so Komachi suspected that Alice did slightly more than sleep in here.

And in one corner: the bed, with Alice sleeping in it.

She’d passed out practically as soon as her head hit the pillow. She hadn’t done much else upon arriving, either. Just gulped down a few glasses of water and headed straight for bed. All without giving any details on just what had happened down in that cave, either, but…

Well, Komachi knew Yukari. At the very least, she had some pretty good ideas of why Yukari had known that Alice had collapsed somewhere down there.

With a sigh, she settled into the armchair to wait. One of the bookshelves was nearby. She glanced over the titles to see if anything sounded like a good way to kill time, but they all sounded way too advanced for her, or had names like _A Herbalist’s Guide to the Japanese Yew_ that suggested she wasn’t going to find the contents too interesting. She got enough plants in her day job, thank you very much. Nothing to do but sit, wait, and try not to think too much.

Komachi tried to live a pretty chill life. She didn’t need all the complications and conflict that people like Yukari seemed to thrive on. As part of that, she tried not to worry about things that were beyond her control. Which this situation was, but…

Alice had worked herself ragged, and who knew what kind of stubborn, reckless thing she’d done down in that cave. Yukari was barely in better shape, and it felt like the only thing between her and a nervous breakdown was her conviction that she could fix this. Rin still hadn’t gotten over the cat thing and seemed a lot more upset about Alice’s condition than she’d care to admit. Hatate… at least _Hatate_ didn’t seem like her life was collapsing or anything. So there was that. Then again, she’d never been super open about her emotions. So who knew what she was bottling up inside.

All this stuff with Gensokyo being rewritten or whatever, Komachi was okay with on a personal level. Even if she had to be the one to risk her life jumping into an anomaly to fix it or something, she could make her peace with that. Death wasn’t a big deal. Heck, she _knew_ death, or at least the local representative—short girl, white hair, had a mean scythe swing and couldn’t take a joke. Nothing about this setup was great, but she’d lived in the Netherworld her whole life. She had long ago accepted that her life as she knew it was a decidedly temporary state of affairs as far as the universe was concerned. That, she could deal with. But when it started hurting her friends and tearing apart the stuff they held dear, suddenly her serenity felt a lot more tenuous.

Or less philosophically: She was worried, things kinda sucked, most of her friends were walking messes right now, there wasn’t much she could do about it, and she could really use a drink. A drink and a nap. The former, she could probably line up sooner or later. The latter… well, even lady Saigyouji’s infinite patience would only let her skimp on the gardening so many days in a row. Whenever she got home after all of this, she might actually have to do some work. How awful.

The sound of creaking bed springs pulled Komachi out of her thoughts. Alice was shifting around now, first rolling onto her side, then adjusting her position beneath the blankets. When she let out a deep yawn and started pushing them away, Komachi took that as her cue to stand up and approach the bed.

“Morning,” she said. “Well, afternoon. You didn’t actually sleep all that long. How are you feeling?”

Alice rubbed at her eyes. “Mmh, better… where’s Rin?”

“Well, jeez, nice to see you too. I see how it is. Rin had to go. Said she 'actually does got a job to do, yannow,' and said I should wish you a speedy recovery.”

“Nnf.” Alice pushed herself up to sitting with a soft grunt of effort. “I’m sorry. Thank you for looking after me.”

“It’s fine, didn’t take it personally or anything. How do you feel, though?”

“I’m… er.” Alice frowned, looking down at the sheets in thought. “… I went into one of those things. The blue anomalies. I was in there for… hours, at least, but I don’t think time quite works the same in there. I think I was more, er, disoriented than injured, if that makes sense.”

“I mean, yeah. I felt like crap after that one I went into, and I was in there for about four minutes. Anyway, Rin left some soup cooking, so hopefully we can get some food into you soon, okay?”

“Thank you. I’m not sure if I have time to waste, though. I _know_ there’s something I need to do. I—” Alice froze in sudden realization. She patted at her side under the bed. “The mini-hakkero. Did I have it when you found me? I can’t remember.”

“Huh? Oh, your little magic thing? Yeah, you had it. Think we left it in the front room.”

“Good.” Alice pushed herself against the mattress and rose out of bed. She wobbled slightly as she straightened up. “I think that it's about time for somebody to teach the Hakurei shrine maiden a lesson.”

“Whoa, whoa!” Komachi hurried over and looped an arm around her shoulder for support. “You've really gotta get some rest, okay? I mean, I’m sure Yukari did do something really dumb down there, but…”

Alice pushed her arm away. “I... I found the girl. The one who can fix this. I risked my life to rescue her, and Yukari _took_ her from me and left me there. What else am I supposed to do?”

Komachi grimaced. It was not sounding like her life was going to be getting less complicated any time soon. “At this point? Sit back, relax, and wait for Yukari to fix everything.”

* * *

Another busy day.

Rinnosuke couldn't be less pleased with his success.

It had been like this ever since the tengu had broken the news about Gensokyo being in trouble. Suzunaan was the shop that carried the tengu newspaper, after all. Dozens of villagers had stopped in every day to check for a new issue. Even once they'd accepted that no developments were going to come out so quickly, more villagers had shown up to browse the books. This part was more familiar, at least. Every few years, some supernatural event or another led people to start prophesying the apocalypse. Every single time, they flooded to Suzunaan to hunt for whatever books he had on divination, prophecy, appeasing the gods, and the afterlife.

And they never put the books back where they found them, either. _Customers_ , really. They were a necessary evil in the fine art of doing business.

A few had been reasonable enough as to actually rent the books and take them home. This only introduced new problems, though, as very few of the villagers were accustomed to caring for books. So many poor members of his collection had come back with dirty fingerprints, food stains, or on three separate occasions, chew marks from various pets.

He flipped through one, looking mournfully over the interior. Two pages were stuck together. It took a good three minutes to pry them apart, only to discover that they each had a deep stain from some kind of juice. He prodded at it with a fingertip. Bone dry. Wonderful.

There were ways to get stains out of paper, of course. Those were a lot of effort, though. And he had a dozen books like this to get through tonight. This would just have to do. After peeling another few pages apart, he sat it aside with a sigh, then started considering which patient to move onto next—

There was a firm knock at the door.

Rinnosuke looked up, adjusting his glasses as he glanced toward it. “I'm sorry, we're closed. Please come back tomorrow.”

Instead, there was a brief rattle, a soft click, and the door swung open. Yukari stepped through. “Oh, I'm afraid I couldn't hear you through the door. Much more convenient to talk face-to-face, don't you think?”

Rinnosuke wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of seeing him get frustrated about this, but... “I could swear that I locked the door.”

“Well, it would seem that it isn't locked anymore, now is it?”

“No, it would seem not.” He sighed. “What do you want, miss Yukari?”

“I have another print job for you. A _rush_ print job. How soon could you complete it?”

Yukari reached into a dangling sleeve and withdrew a folded piece of paper, then offered it over. Rinnosuke accepted and unfolded it to peer over the contents. It was another flyer. This time, across the top: ' _WANTED: Seija Kijin, amanojaku. Believed to have an artifact that is vitally important for Gensokyo's safety. She is believed to be dangerous, and normal humans should keep their distance. If you have any information on her whereabouts, please contact the Hakurei shrine maiden._ '

And below it...

“I didn't know that you could draw, miss Yukari.”

“Anybody _can_ draw. What sets me apart is being halfway decent at it.”

'Halfway decent' was about right. The face in the picture was identifiable, at least. Two horns poked up from the head, a few swaths of lighter shading ran through its hair, and the creature's face was contorted in an intimidating, oni-like snarl. Nobody would ever be able to match it to a specific face, but the list of people with horns and multi-colored hair was rather short.

Well. In Rinnosuke's experience, at least. He'd only met a few youkai.

“Well?” Yukari prompted him, after another few seconds.

“My backlog is full right now. I just got a rush order from the temple…”

“Your loyalty as a human should say that this takes priority, right?”

“The temple’s order is, er… here.” He fished out the working proof from his desk and offered it up. “They want to hold a meeting for all of the different factions to talk about this… whatever is going on. It seems like the big question is whether or not to try evacuating Gensokyo.”

Yukari frowned at the paper. “Trust that monk to try acting like she’s in charge. But, that only highlights the difference. You see, _my_ paper is working toward the goal of saving Gensokyo. Wouldn’t you rather preserve Gensokyo than evacuate it?”

“Ah. Er—“

“… and, of course, if your posters prove instrumental in _saving_ Gensokyo, that would make you a hero, now wouldn't it? You'd practically have to fight off the comely young maidens with deeply-held opinions on literature.”

“I really don't think that's going to happen.”

“Oh, will flattery not work? Hmm, which would you prefer out of extortion or blackmail, then?”

Rinnosuke pursed his lips in annoyance, then sighed out his tension. There was just no winning with Yukari. The path of least resistance was just to give her what she wanted. “I can... probably get it done by noon tomorrow. But that's only if I can get the woodworker to take a rush order overnight. And these things do cost money, you know.”

“I'm sure that Mokou won't mind a few hundred more posters on the Hieda family's tab.” Yukari was already walking toward the door again. “If she complains, send her to me.”

“Miss Yukari,” Rinnosuke said tersely. “That isn't how tabs are supposed to work.”

Yukari shot him a smile over her shoulder. “You should really know by now, Rin-rin: Things work however I want them to.”

As she slipped through the door, Rinnosuke yelled after her, “And you still have four overdue books...!” The door closed before he was even halfway through the sentence. He didn't even get the satisfaction of knowing whether his parting remark had landed.

With a groan, he lifted the paper and looked over it again. “Well. Let's get to work, then.”

* * *

The chamber in which the great tengu plotted their schemes was one of the most protected places in the tengu village. There were guards stationed outside, guards in the foyer, and two guards in the chamber at all times. What few outsiders were allowed into the village were firmly guided away from getting anywhere near it. The walls were thick enough to repel a battering ram, and the entrance had five layers of curtains to stop the slightest sound from escaping.

None of which meant anything to somebody who could read the very wind, so Kanako could understand every word they said from the waiting area outside.

“This girl she had with her... what did she look like?”

“Hmm... it's kind of hard to say. I didn't have a very good angle, since Yukari's back was to me most of the time. I think her hair was lavender? Oh, no, lilac! That's a better word for it. And, like I said, she was short. Maybe thirteen centimeters? She _could_ have been dead, but I'm pretty sure that I saw her breathing at least a little.”

“And the other girl, the magician. Did she survive?”

“Oh, yeah! Her friends came and got her after. Um, the Scarlet Devil Mansion maid and the Hakugyokurou gardener, that is. She didn't look hurt that I could see.”

“Heh.” It was a dry, mirthless rasp. “The Hakurei girl is more soft-hearted than she lets on. That is enough. You've done well. Send Shameimaru in on your way out.”

“Right! Thank you, sirs! It, um, was a pleasure!”

Kanako really didn't know what to feel about this eavesdropping. In theory, it was probably punishable by banishment, or at the very least a stern lecture. In practice, the great tengu definitely knew that she could hear them. They also knew that _she_ knew that they knew. … and so on. It was possible that they simply viewed this as a more efficient way to get her up to speed on the day's events, but with the great tengu, it was always safer to assume some sort of multi-layered plan. At some point, you just had to give up on untangling it and trust yourself to power through whatever obstacles it presented.

The curtains into the chamber parted. Sanae emerged.

“You know,” Kanako said, rising to her feet. “You don't hide your emotions very well when your tail is wagging enough to stir up a breeze.”

Sanae glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, her tail was swishing back and forth at full speed. “W-well, I can't help it! It isn't every day that you get praised by the great tengu! Um, well, I mean, maybe it is for _you_ , but they barely even care about us wolves. Usually I'm just talking to lots of boring middle-management types...”

“It's less stressful that way. Trust me.” Kanako rested a hand on Sanae's head, ruffling her hair and scratching at the base of an ear. “I’ll tell you what: Suwako and I are supposed to have a drink once I’m done here. Why don’t you join us? We can call it a celebration.”

“A-ah, I don’t know if we really need to _celebrate_ it, but… sure! I’m free. Oh! Um, they did ask for you to go in next, though. Sorry, I probably shouldn't hold you up out here...”

“I know. Thank you, Sanae. I’ll be out shortly.”

Kanako stepped past her, pushing her own way through curtain after curtain, until she stepped out into the chamber beyond.

As usual, the lack of furniture or any view of the outdoors gave it a timeless feeling. The great tengu were all seated right where they always were. The room was just as it had been the last time that she’d entered. This time, though, she’d been summoned on more urgent business. She skipped past the rigmarole of kneeling in silence, opting to instead simply dip a deep bow. “You called for me?”

“Hrnh, yes,” said one, stroking his beard. “Things are progressing. The Hakurei girl has captured one of the instigators.”

“I see.”

“And yet, we are still here,” said another. “She has yet to change reality to her tastes. Among all of the tengu, you are the most familiar with this girl. What do you make of this?”

“Yukari isn't one for indecision. If she hasn't done anything yet, she's either decided against it, or incapable of doing so. If I had to guess, the latter.”

“That was our assessment, as well. Your insight is appreciated. But now, Shameimaru, the reason that we called you here: The amanojaku has stopped moving. It seems that she has taken up residence in the ruins on the far side of Youkai Mountain. By this time tomorrow, she will be in our custody.”

“I assume that you want another article, then.”

“Not just an article. A public announcement, as well. Every heart in Gensokyo must be poised to judge the Hakurei shrine maiden if she does not cooperate with us. Begin your preparations. You will be provided with the necessary details once we have captured the amanojaku. You are dismissed.”

Kanako turned toward the exit... then paused, looking back to the great tengu. She knew that she should keep her mouth shut. If she didn't say one thing, though, it was going to bug her all night. “Respectfully—” She bowed again, just to mollify their egos. “Our reports said that Alice appeared to let the amanojaku escape. It doesn’t seem likely that she alone is enough to fix all of this. If we even _can_ fix this, we might need the amanojaku and the inchling both.”

“We are aware, Shameimaru.”

“Yukari doesn't seem likely to give up her half of the puzzle. This isn't a situation where she's going to just surrender and hand it over if I win a spell card duel against her.”

There was silence. For a moment, Kanako wonder if she'd gone a bit too far.

Finally, one of the great tengu spoke. “Tell me, Shameimaru. How old are you?”

“Hm? Well, I haven't kept track entirely, but about eleven hundred years.”

“So young. It seems that you are naive yet. This is a matter of survival. The ascendancy of the tengu as a people. If the shrine maiden will not cooperate...” The great tengu who was speaking leaned forward, resting one clawed hand on his ledge as he peered down at her. She could just make out his slit-pupiled eyes through the mask. “… removing one girl is no great obstacle. The Hakurei bleed as well as any other human. I have seen it myself.”

Kanako took a moment to digest that sentence, reassuring herself that she’d caught the implication correctly before she dared to react. “I wasn’t aware that we were in the business of assassinating shrine maidens.”

“If we can unite both halves of this puzzle and gain the ability to rewrite reality, a few human lives are of no consequence. They can be made again—or unmade—at our leisure.”

“I would... rather it not come to that. Sirs.”

“Then when the time comes for you to instead fight her with words, see to it that your weapons are sharp. You are dismissed, Shameimaru. I would suggest that you not test our patience a second time.”

Kanako had enough sense not to try for another round of questions. “I understand. Thank you for tolerating my indiscretions.”

She took great care as she walked out of the room, keeping her stride natural. It took a conscious effort. Her outrage and annoyance kept trying to clench her hands into fists and grit her teeth.

 _Whatever is necessary to create a future in which the tengu continue to prosper._ That was what they’d said last time, wasn’t it? What an interesting definition of ‘necessary.’ At least their cavalier attitude toward the risk of getting a few humans hurt with her first article made more sense now. Consequences were for people who couldn’t rewrite reality on a whim, and it seemed that they fully intended to seize that status for themselves one way or another.

Kanako could think of few people that she’d trust less with the ability, and most of the others were fairies.

Outside in the foyer, Sanae was still waiting for her. “Welcome back! How’d it go?”

It was such a sharp change in tone, Kanako had to take a moment, blinking in surprise as her thoughts reordered themselves. “It was very informative.” She breathed out some anxiety, while considering her options. “Sanae... how would you like to help me save Gensokyo?”

“Um? Well, that’s kind of sudden, but sure, I guess!”

“Good. Then let’s go get that drink. We have a lot to talk about.”


	14. Interlude #2: Shinmyoumaru

Shinmyoumaru Sukuna awoke in a land that was not sized for her.

The shrine was dark. It was still late at night. However long she’d been asleep, it wasn’t enough. But… it had only been just over a day since she’d been rescued from the castle, and even shorter since she’d awoken afterward. Rest still didn’t come easily. She couldn’t remember much of the time she’d spent floating there in the castle, but it had left its mark on her. When she closed her eyes, the memories started drifting back in, incoherent flashes of other worlds. Worlds where she didn’t belong.

She could rest later. Right now, she was filled with an anxious energy.

With Yukari’s help, she’d started assembling her own space inside the shrine. A smaller living area nested within the larger one, sized more appropriately to herself. Her bed—a cardboard box from the outside world with cloth piled inside to serve as a mattress—was the centerpiece. Around this were what few accommodations Yukari had been able to provide at a more normal scale. A chunk of scrap wood served as her table, with the broken-off scoop of a measuring spoon for her combination bowl and cup. A cork gave her something akin to a stool, and they’d already found that a giant-sized bowl worked for a makeshift bathtub. It wasn’t much, at least not yet. As soon as she found some more supplies, though, a house was in her future.

She slipped out of bed and pulled her clothes on. In the dark, the shrine looked like some abandoned city. Furniture loomed overhead at a scale she’d usually associate with palaces. A discarded sake bottle was laying on its side a few meters away, large enough that she would fit inside. Off in the distance, Yukari’s sleeping form was a foothill, illuminated by the moonlight.

It was a good thing Yukari _was_ sleeping. On the outside, Shinmyoumaru was grateful to her rescuer. Which she was, mostly. But, she had some pressing questions, and they hadn’t yet been answered to her satisfaction.

Even investigating was going to be an ordeal in this giant’s abode, though. There were enough obstacles that she had to stand back, looking at what she had to work with and making a plan.

First things first: If she was going to do this, she needed to do it without waking Yukari, which meant going outside. She walked over to the shrine’s front door, a twenty-second hike. Bracing herself against its edge, she put her entire body into pushing it. It didn’t cooperate easily. At her scale, it was a monolith that towered to the heavens. Once she’d gotten it to crack open the slightest amount, she found a pencil on the floor and jammed it into the gap. Using the pencil as a lever, she was able to budge the door further open. Finally, the opening was a few centimeters wide, large enough for her to slip through.

Which she didn’t do just yet. Instead, she headed back inside and hunted around for a few minutes until she found a candle.

Compared to her, it was the size of a log. She struggled to lift one end, then slung it over her shoulder. It was just barely light enough for her to drag it along behind her, the far end bumping along the ridges on the floor. By the time she reached the door, she was half-exhausted. She put it down for a few minutes and instead used it as a seat while she rested. When she could move again, she maneuvered it through the door and out onto the shrine’s front step.

Next was a length of string, which she was thankfully able to snip off of the fraying edge of a garment. She tied it around the candle, near the top.

Next, a book of matches. Thankfully, this was a smaller load, one that she could carry clasped in front of her. The matches were each the size of one of her arms, though. Ripping one out took all the force she could muster. To light it, she pinned the match book down with a foot, then gave it a swipe that required the force of her whole body. Once it was lit, she only had a few seconds to act. She had to hurry over to the candle, transferring the flame to its wick and then waving the match wildly to extinguish it.

Now came the dangerous part: Bracing her feet against the base of the candle, Shinmyoumaru grabbed the string that she’d tied on earlier and gave it a smooth, steady tug. The tip of the candle rose from the floor, pivoting against its base. Bit by bit, her job grew easier, as the candle rose to tower above her. Soon, she had to step back, easing it closer to an upright position. It reached that point… and then wobbled, threatening to topple over. She rushed over and threw her whole body at the base to stabilize it. The candle pushed against her a few times, rocking in place until it settled in. Only then did she dare to let go of it and breathe a sigh of relief. Whatever Yukari’s intentions, burning her shrine down probably wouldn’t have gone well for Shinmyoumaru.

It left only one thing remaining, but she’d left the hardest task for last.

Against the back wall of the shrine’s living quarters stood a small bookshelf. Shinmyoumaru made her way back to it and hauled herself up onto the lowest shelf. Strolling along the spines, she could just barely make out the titles in the dark. They ranged from near-ancient text in archaic tongues to crisp, shiny materials from the outside world, some of which weren’t even in any language she recognized. A lot of the subject matter was mysterious too. She’d spotted one earlier that she knew she wanted, though, and it didn’t take long to find it.

Finding it was the easy part, though. The spine was as thick as her waist, and the books were crammed into the shelf. She found just enough room to squeeze her hands in around it and get a grip. To pull it out, she had to plant her feet on the books to either side and tug. It reluctantly budged outward. Millimeter by millimeter, she coaxed the book out of the shelf. Once it was about halfway out, things got easier. It slipped free of its confines… and immediately toppled over.

 _WHAM._ The book landed with a deafening clap that kicked up a cloud of dust and blew Shinmyoumaru’s hair back. She suppressed the urge to scramble away from it. Barely even daring to breathe, she glanced toward Yukari… and found her still sound asleep. These sorts of sounds weren’t as impressive at giant scales, she supposed. She still waited a good thirty seconds before she dared to move again.

She’d gotten the book off of the shelf. Getting it out of the shrine, though, was going to take some more creativity.

After some thought, she ran back to the door and found the pencil she’d used to pry it open. She dragged it to the bookshelf, then repeated the process two more times, finding two more pencils and pulling them over. She placed one parallel to the edge of the shelf, barely a centimeter from it. The next pencil sat about ten centimeters away, and the next beyond that. Grabbing the edge of the book, she dragged it across the shelf until it started hanging down. Things got easier as soon as its weight rested on the first pencil. The pencil rolled along beneath it, leaving her fighting against much less friction. Once the book was resting on two pencils, she didn't even need to support it. After it reached the third, she ran back and grabbed the now-uncovered first pencil, then hauled it up to place it back in front of the book. Soon, she was rolling it steadily along on an effectively endless trail of pencils.

She felt proud of herself for her ingenuity… until she reached the door. There, she had to crawl under the book, bracing her shoulder against it to heft it up onto its spine. She hurried to jam it into the crack between the door and its frame before it could fall over, then had to wrestle it through, in the exact reverse of her earlier ordeal with the bookcase. Finally, though, it popped free. The book fell to the floor once more, this time outside of the shrine.

It had taken forty minutes, but her preparations were complete. On the shrine’s front step now sat a candle, illuminating a patch a few meters in every direction, and a book, whose title she could now read much more easily: _The Creation of the Hakurei Barrier, by Reimu Yakumo._

Before she started reading, though, she plopped herself down by the book’s base for a well-deserved rest, and stared up at the sky.

There was no sky to speak of underground, of course, in the World of the Oni. There was only a cavern ceiling, occasionally illuminated by the glow of fire. After spending her entire life down there, the scale here was _unthinkable_. The largest caverns in the underworld were kilometers across, and they could have held entire nations of inchlings if no giants were around. Here, even kilometers were a mere drop in an ocean. The clouds drifting overhead were so far away that she couldn’t even begin to guess how long it would take to get to them. The moon was beyond even those, and then the stars, so much farther… even looking up gave her a sense of vertigo, but it was beautiful.

It wasn’t her first time seeing it, of course. Seija had taken her on a few forays to the surface to show her Gensokyo, the land that was, according to Seija, as much the birthright of the inchlings as any other species. The inchlings, who had lived in prosperity among the youkai before being cast aside and banished underground once they’d served their purpose. The inchlings, whose heroism and martial prowess could only do so much to stand up to the assault of giants twenty times their size.

It had all made sense at the time. The youkai of the underworld had been volatile trading partners at best, and any one of them qualified as a natural disaster if they so much as got careless around an inchling settlement. But then… what of Yukari? From everything that Seija had told her, she would have expected the woman to do a million awful things to her while she was incapacitated. And a lot of Yukari’s claims went directly against Seija’s…

So, no more time for laying around. She had a few more hours before sunrise, she was pretty sure, and another half-hour of that would need to go to putting all of this stuff away. Best to make use of what little time she had. Shinmyoumaru stood up and grabbed the cover of the book, bracing her shoulder against it and shoving it open. And, turning the first massive page, she began to read.


	15. Chapter 12

“Sakuya said that you wanted to see me,” said Patchouli Yagokoro, the renegade scholar-pharmacist of the moon, without even looking up from her work. She pulled the pestle back, inspecting the brown-ish powder that she was grinding up. Apparently unsatisfied, she gave it a few firm grinds. “You have ten minutes.”

“Of course, I know you're busy.”

Not that Alice launched right into her pitch just yet. Instead, she took a few moments to look around. Patchouli's combination workshop and laboratory was cluttered. The orderly kind of disorder of somebody who liked to have everything in arm's reach and knew where to find whatever she needed, even if it was buried under two layers of detritus at this point. One wall was entirely lined with cabinets full of tinctures, powders, extracts, essences, infusions, pills, colloid suspensions, balms, ointments, pastilles, and things that Alice couldn't even identify.

Rumor had it that this room contained the cure for practically every malady that could befall a mortal. … and four of the five cabinets were locked, because Patchouli also wasn't eager to share. She wasn't known for her sociability. She wasn't _known_ in general, really. Even after Eientei's presence had been revealed to the rest of Gensokyo, she'd stayed reclusive. This situation probably called for some tact.

Tact had never been Alice's strong suit, but she was going to have to make it work. Time to call on every ounce of shopkeeper's blood in her body.

“Oh,” she said, glancing to one of the many bottles in the room. “Is that Prussian Blue?”

Patchouli shot her an annoyed glance. After waiting for a few seconds, like she was hoping that Alice would lose interest and leave, she gave a halfhearted shrug and turned back to her work. “It is.”

“Do you mind if I have a look?”

Patchouli's only response was a mumble. Alice took that as a 'yes.' She took the bottle from the shelf and turned it over in her hands. Not that there was much to look at. There was barely half a centimeter of the vivid blue powder covering the bottom of the bottle. “You seem to be running out.”

“The direct precursors aren't common here.”

“The kappa produce a lot of it, actually. It's a waste product as far as they're concerned. I'm sure I could get you some. I happen to know where they dump it, which sidesteps the problem of paying them.”

“I don't go through much of it. Gensokyo sees notably few cases of heavy metal poisoning.” Even so, Patchouli sounded more interested than she'd care to admit. “… if you showed up with some, I wouldn't turn you away. Now, are you going to tell me why you actually wanted to see me?”

Alice breathed a mental sigh of relief. She'd been afraid that she might have beaten around the bush a bit too much. “I'm sure that you know by now that our reality is... an unstable copy, I suppose you could call it?”

“I'm aware, yes. If you’re here about the evacuation, I’m not interested. Eientei will look after itself.”

“‘Look after itself’?”

“Yes.”

Alice let a few seconds pass in silence to see if Patchouli was about to elaborate. When she didn’t, she accepted that there were some secrets she just wasn’t going to pry out of her. “Regardless, no. The evacuation hasn’t even been decided on yet. The vote isn’t for a few more hours. Personally, I still think that we stand a chance of fixing this… and if somebody with the means to do so steps forward, it will be much easier.”

“Mmh.”

Alice could see that being indirect wasn't going to go anywhere. “Miss Yagokoro, is there anything you can do here?”

“What kind of medication do you think will fix a timeline?”

“Maybe... some sort of Lunarian technology?”

“No.”

“I see. I _was_ wondering about whether the princesses' ability to manipulate eternity—”

“… isn’t something that they can apply however they’d like. Even if they could do it to all of Gensokyo, everything would become static and unchanging, like Eientei was before we were discovered. … and Remi would be insufferable if she were responsible for saving everybody.”

Alice couldn't deny that part, at least. She still wasn't going to accept defeat so easily. “You're likely the smartest person in Gensokyo. If _anybody_ can fix this—”

“Miss Kirisame.” Patchouli finally dropped her work, wiping some of the residual dust from her fingers with a cloth. “This isn't a situation that can be fixed with wits alone. The amount of energy required would be beyond anything that I can produce on demand. Even if I had that, channeling it precisely enough to stabilize the timeline without frying everybody in a fifty kilometer radius would require very precise, very complicated magical arts, which I do not possess. If I did have the secret of manipulating reality, which to reiterate, I do not, I still wouldn't trust it to a mortal witch barely out of the cradle. Now. Will there be anything else?”

Patchouli's tone made it clear that the only acceptable answer was 'no.' Alice wasn't about to push her luck. “I believe that covers it. Thank you for your time. I'll show myself out.” After a curtsy, she hurried out the door and made her way out of the manor.

She made herself wait until she was a good distance away before pulling a small notebook from her pocket. After flipping to the correct page, she went down her list and crossed out 'PATCHOULI.' 

It came after half a dozen other names. Half a dozen gods and powerful youkai, none of whom thought that they would be able to stabilize a failing reality. Below it, there was only one name left: ‘GAP YOUKAI.’

But the only person who knew how to get ahold of _them_ was Reimu, and that lazy fox was almost as hard to find, herself. It wasn’t really a lead that Alice could follow up on. The only person who could get in touch with Reimu was Yukari, and… that was not happening. Alice wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of asking for it.

It left her at a loss, though. She couldn’t exactly fix this herself. The Miracle Mallet was still unaccounted for, and with half of Gensokyo plastered with wanted posters with Seija’s face on them, she didn’t like her odds of tracking her down before Yukari did. Even if she managed that much, the mallet was no good without the inchling girl, who was still securely held at the shrine. Although perhaps if Alice got her hands on half of the solution, she could force a bargain out of Yukari…

With a sigh, she folded her notebook closed and glanced to the sky, gauging the time. It was late morning. Still a few hours before the big meeting started.

Might as well get hunting for the mallet, she supposed.

* * *

Alice would have been happy to know that Yukari’s day wasn’t going any better.

Any day where she had to spend time around Eirin Komeiji was, by definition, not a day that was going well.

Eirin sat across from her, stirring her tea with a distant look on her face. Somebody more unfamiliar with the girl might have thought she was snubbing Yukari. If anything, the truth was worse—that third eye of hers was the one thing giving Yukari attention, boring right into her soul with that piercing gaze.

“No, I’m sorry. Your amanojaku isn’t down here.”

Yukari hadn’t even _said_ anything yet, but that was satori for you. Even compared to her sister, though, talking to Eirin was always a pain. Kaguya would just entertain herself by plucking secrets and stray thoughts out of a guest’s head, like they were baubles that they’d brought for her amusement. Eirin, on the other hand, lifted out every thought, figured out the hidden lines that connected them, and skipped through half of the conversation without needing anything so clumsy as input from her conversation partner.

“I’m sure that you haven’t seen her, but—”

“You saw the sentries on your way here. Every tunnel to the surface is monitored at all times. The vengeful spirits haven’t reported anybody unusual, and oni and amanojaku don’t get along. And no, I’d prefer it if you didn’t ask around. After the unrest caused by that newspaper, half of the denizens want to attack you for hiding the truth for so long, and the other half want to attack you out of the mistaken belief that you can fix this.” Eirin paused, finally meeting Yukari’s eyes with her own, two, eyes. “Will there be anything else, miss Hakurei?”

“Since you’re a—”

 _Since you’re a mind reader, I’ll do away with the pretense of acting like that wasn’t intensely annoying,_ is what Yukari had intended to say. Eirin cut her off after three whole words with, “Yes, thank you. It’s much more efficient this way.”

Yukari opened her mouth to speak, but this time she simply didn’t bother.

“Of course,” Eirin said. “If we see your amanojaku, I’ll send word to the surface. We have as much of an interest in keeping Gensokyo intact as you do, after all. Until then, have a good day.”

Yukari lingered for just a moment more. Letting a youkai run roughshod over her like that went against her every instinct as the Hakurei shrine maiden. But, getting the last word in against a mind reader was probably an exercise in futility. With a curt nod, she rose to her feet and showed herself out of the manor.

The far end of the underworld was about as distant as one could get from the heart of Gensokyo. The main cavern of the Former Hell was kilometers across by itself, and then the caves leading to the blowhole were a few more kilometers. A few hundred meters past that to the surface, and then the flight back to the shrine itself. The trip was entirely more effort than she wanted to put into anything, let alone simply getting home.

Not a single reliable lead. Nobody had seen Seija _or_ the mallet. Even Reimu hadn't been able to tell her anything other than that Seija hadn't passed through the barrier. Nobody had any good ideas of where a fugitive youkai might be hiding, but with dozens of kilometers of unmapped caverns beneath Gensokyo, plenty of youkai-infested wilderness, and half a dozen connected realms, the real problem was narrowing down the options. Her Hakurei instincts, usually helpful when intellect and cleverness could only take her so far, didn't have much to say on the matter. Effectively, Seija had vanished from the face of the earth.

The Hakurei shrine finally came into view below, announcing the end of her tiring journey. She drifted down past the treetops, coming to a light landing just past the main torii, and approached the front door. As busy as she'd been with her search, it showed a bit more grime and wear than usual. The place could use a good dusting and a few repairs, but keeping the universe intact came first. There was an upside to all of this, though—glinting coins caught her eye from within the donation box as she walked past. She stopped to retrieve them. Donations _had_ picked up lately. Uncertainty and fear were pretty good at driving business. Nothing made people reconsider their faith like the looming end of days.

She was just straightening up from grabbing the coins when she heard Komachi's voice from within the shrine. It almost inspired her to turn around and head out for another round of interrogations. She knew what Komachi was here for, and she wanted no part of it.

But, that sounded at least as tiresome as putting up with it. Putting on a face that insisted she had no idea that anybody else was in her shrine. Yukari pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The shrine's interior was a bit of a mess, too. After her obsessive review of the other Gensokyo chronicle, she'd needed to start planning the joint festival with Hatate, and then barely a few days before she started shadowing Alice, followed by the search for Seija… Somewhere in there, she'd found just enough time to clear out a space in the front room big enough for a few people to be comfortable in. Now, Komachi was sitting in the middle of it, working her way through a small stack of rice crackers, while on the table in front of her, Shinmyoumaru was carefully chowing down on one half as big as she was.

“So you _don't_ ride birds or anything?”

“Look, lady, have you ever tried catching a bird?! They're super fast.”

“Well… okay, yeah. But horses are fast too, and people managed to tame those somehow.”

“Horses can't fly!”

“Same difference. Oh, hey, Yukari.” Komachi paused to push another rice cracker into her mouth. “I'm just saying, seems like a real missed opportunity if you're afraid of us big folks pushing you around.”

“Hmph.” Shinmyoumaru didn't dignify with that a response. Instead, she looked to Yukari. “You didn't find my mallet, did you?”

“No such luck. When I do find your amanojaku friend, I'm going to roast her over a fire for all the trouble she's causing me. Youkai have been eating humans for eons, and it's only right for me to return the favor at this point.”

“Hmm… well… she looks like she might be stringy.”

“I've eaten plenty of rabbits. I'm sure that I'll manage.”

“Speaking of eating,” Komachi said. “Yukari, want to stop in and get dinner somewhere while we're in town? I'm in a meat kind of mood, myself. Shin can come too. Pretty sure I won't even notice if she's eating from my plate.”

“That's because your plates usually have enough food for any four people. And while that sounds lovely, I don't know that I have any appointments in town today.”

“Come on, you know what I'm talking about.”

“Do I?” Yukari pulled up a cushion and flopped down in an inelegant position, letting her eyes drift closed. “I'm afraid that it's nothing but naps in my schedule for the rest of the day. Please register any complaints with the goddesses.”

“Pretending it isn't happening won't do anything, you know. The inevitable comes whether you want it or not. Sitting it out is giving up what little control you have.”

“You're using your 'smug, philosophical ghost' voice again.”

“What's this all about?” Shinmyoumaru asked, and took a big bite of cracker as she eyed Yukari curiously. “Where are you supposed to go?”

“Nowhere,” Yukari said. “I'm going nowhere.”

“The village,” Komachi said. “There's a meeting today about all of this. If the humans should start looking into evacuating Gensokyo, that kind of thing. And the star of the show here...” Komachi reached over and grabbed the collar of her uniform, hefting Yukari off the floor. “… couldn't sit that out, now could she?”

Yukari dangled limply. If it was coming to this, she was going to be dead weight. “I could, in fact. I’m very good at sitting things out.”

“Huh.” Shinmyoumaru took another bite of cracker, looking over the two thoughtfully. “I thought a bunch of giants would be able to fix something like this, no sweat.”

“A bunch of giants, maybe,” Komachi said, dragging Yukari to her feet. “Too bad for Gensokyo, they’ve just got some weird girls who can shoot lasers.”

* * *

“I’m just sayin’, Alice.” Rin didn’t look up from cleaning her nails with the point of a dagger as she spoke. “Gettin’ recovered enough to get around, then going to visit those weird moon people before we get some time together? That’s just bad manners, that is.”

“I’m not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but there’s a life-or-death sort of scenario happening. Remember, with you being a cat?”

“Sure ya feel up to this, though…? You seemed pretty rough when we fished you out of that cave…”

“I’m fine, dear.” Well. Alice was at least fine- _ish_. She’d had to drag herself out of bed this morning and her head still felt fuzzy, but Gensokyo’s problems weren’t going to wait up on her to fully recover.

So, she was pleased when Hatate changed the subject.

“Hey, come to think of it.” Hatate said. “Why’s she a cat in that other Gensokyo, and I’m a bird, but _you’re_ still a person?”

“I’m the closest thing to a normal person out of the three of us, aren’t I?”

“Hey! Whoa, no, no.” Hatate finally looked up from her game. Somehow, she’d been continuing to play it while walking down the path, without so much as glancing at the ground. “ _I_ ’m the normal person here. This whole ‘ye olde youkai times’ thing Gensokyo has going is cool and all, but it isn’t normal. What’s _normal_ is, like, having a cell phone, and taking the train downtown after school to get ice cream with your friends or whatever. This is a statistical anomaly.”

“Well then, if we lived in the outside world, perhaps I would be some sort of animal. But we don’t.”

“What kinda animal would ya even be?” Rin asked.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Hmm…” Rin glanced from Alice, then to Hatate. “I’m thinkin’ cat?”

“Cats are prissy enough, but it’s gotta be all headstrong and stuff, too,” Hatate said.

“Oh yeah! Totally stubborn n’ all. Uh… what animal’s stubborn?”

“I think, like, farm animals? Goats and stuff, I dunno.”

“Hey, yeah! A sheep! Soft n’ fluffy n’ whatnot!”

“Sheep are pretty dumb, though.”

“Aw. Yeah. Hmm…”

“If you can’t think of what animal I’d be,” Alice said, tactically inserting herself between the two to interrupt the conversation, “that’s just further evidence for me being a human.”

Rin pouted, but dropped the subject. They were getting close now, anyway. The Myouren Temple was already visible in front of them. As they crested a hill, the courtyard in front of it came into view.

The letters that Miko had sent out had said that she was inviting most of the major factions in Gensokyo. Alice could believe it. There were hundreds of people milling about in front of the temple. The vast majority were humans, but there were still plenty of youkai in attendance. The sea of heads was punctuated by horns, fuzzy ears, and more notably, a scythe and the top of an anchor. The clamor of conversation was audible even from a few hundred meters away.

Hatate was the first to speak. “Ugh. Knew I should’ve stayed home.”

“Eh?” Rin glanced back to her. “What’s wrong with this?”

“It’s way too many people.”

“I like it! Makes it all lively. Ain’t seen a crowd like this in ages!”

“I’m not sure if Gensokyo’s _had_ a crowd like this in ages,” Alice said. “I believe they’re starting soon, though. We should probably try to find a good point to listen from.”

Ignoring Hatate’s sighed complaints, she lead the way down into the crowd. This close to the start, it was fairly densely packed, but most humans in Gensokyo recognized at least Alice on sight. For those that didn’t, Rin and Hatate’s fashion sense were enough to convince them that the three were weirdos to be avoided. They were able to make their way to the front of the crowd without too much elbowing. Not that there was much to see yet. There was a clearing at the center around the base of a statue of some bodhisattva or another. Most of the Myouren temple’s members were milling about there, alongside Mokou and a few of her servants.

Tojiko was having some sort of argument with Futo and waving her anchor overhead to accentuate her points. Seiga was endlessly fussing over Yoshika’s squad of helper mice, rubbing a double handful of them against her cheeks. Mokou, Mokou was doing her stubborn best to pretend to be completely unaffiliated with any of this.

As the last few people settled in, though, Miko Hijiri strode forward. In a matter of seconds the crowd was silent.

It was just the natural reaction to Miko. If there was one person on the planet who was born to have superhuman physiology, it was her. Her every movement felt premeditated. Sometimes, it was hard not to believe that the placement of every hair was deliberate. She was like a perfect statue come to life, and her footsteps sounded about as heavy.

“Good afternoon, my friends.” Miko’s voice cut through the air so smoothly that it was hard to believe it wasn’t audible on the mountain. “And thank you for joining us today. When I learned about the trials that we’re facing, I knew that Gensokyo would be entering a period of spiritual strife. My first thoughts, of course, were of how best to serve my fellow man and shepherd as many people as possible through this period of tribulation and chaos. As Buddhists, we’re uniquely positioned for this. Many of you were probably shocked when you heard that our identities are a temporary contrivance and our reality is decaying, but to one who seeks enlightenment, we know that this is just the natural state of this ephemeral world. So, it only seemed right for us to open our home to the rest of Gensokyo, so that what little help we’re capable of can be offered freely. It’s in this mindset that I asked all of you to join me here today, for…”

She went on and on, with perfect diction and enunciation, strolling back and forth across the courtyard. She made aggressive eye contact with the crowd, gesturing emphatically. Not for the first time, Alice found herself uneasily considering the Myouren Temple’s aggressive proselytizing over the past few years. Miko made no secret of the fact that she considered herself the only one capable of leading Gensokyo on a moral path. If she actually did try to step up and take charge one day, Alice didn’t necessarily trust that enough people would say no.

But that was a problem for the future. She had enough to deal with at the present, thank you very much.

“Sure likes to hear herself talk, huh?” Rin muttered.

“It’s like sharks,” Hatate said. “Y’know?”

“Ain’t got a clue, sis.”

“They, like…” Hatate paused her game to consider that. “They’ve got to keep swimming, even when they’re asleep, or they’ll die. So that, but with talking.”

“Dang, really?”

“No, of course not,” Alice said. And after a moment, added, “… but I’m not sure how you’d tell the difference.”

A few nearby audience members shot them annoyed looks, and the group went quiet. There wasn’t really any room for privacy here, unfortunately.

Before Alice’s attention settled back onto the speech, a flash of red hair caught her eyes on the far side of the crowd. Looking over, she spotted Komachi… and standing next to her, Yukari. Yukari, with the inchling girl seated on her shoulder.

Their eyes met. Alice scowled and bit back her urge to challenge the shrine maiden to a duel here and now. And, somebody else in the crowd shifted their position, cutting off the line of sight between the two. The moment passed, just as the crowd broke into applause at the end of Miko’s speech.

Looking out over the crowd, it really wasn’t hard to spot which section held Miko’s followers. Futo was clapping so hard that Mokou’s nearby servants were edging away from her, apparently fearing for their safety. Yoshika wasn’t far behind her when it came to enthusiasm, either. They were two of the final members of the audience to stop clapping, as Mokou stepped forward and approached the center of the circle.

Mokou looked no less confident than Miko had, but where Miko had clearly been drinking in the crowd’s attention, the head of the Hieda family just as clearly resented it.

“So,” Mokou said. It signaled most of the crowd to stop clapping. As the applause tapered off, she continued. “Right. I think you all know what we’re here for. As near as anyone can tell, Gensokyo is going to collapse sooner or later. So. It’s about time that we figure out what we want to do about it. Normally I’d only have humans at something like this, but… well, if we’re evacuating Gensokyo, we’ll need help from youkai. Not that…” The crowd was already clamoring over that topic, starting to drown her out. She raised a hand, and scowled around at them until there was silence again. “ _Not that_ we necessarily need to evacuate. We’re still weighing our options there. That’s what this is about. Unless there’s been any progress fixing this?”

Her gaze turned to the other side of the audience, apparently singling out Yukari. Yukari stepped forward, the crowd parting around her. “I have full confidence that I can, in time.”

“I don’t want to know about ‘in time.’ What do you have, right now?”

“We… haven’t yet captured the amanojaku. The mallet that she’s presumably carrying is the key to all of this.”

“Right. So what you’re saying is, you can’t fix it.”

Yukari pursed her lips for a moment, looking annoyed. She still sounded collected as she said, “Not at the moment, no.”

 _Good._ Alice took entirely too much satisfaction out of seeing Yukari shamed in front of half of Gensokyo. _And they don’t even know what you had to do to get this far._

“So about this proposed evacuation,” Mokou said, moving on and turning back to the crowd. “The village has had plans for this kind of thing for a while. Getting people through the barrier isn’t easy in the first place. So, this would all be going in three groups. First off: Merchants, most of the noble families, old couples, and farmers who just see to their own land. If Gensokyo isn’t going to be left without food or something because you leave, you’re in the first wave. Second, most of the rest of the human village. The only ones staying behind will be—”

A clamor rose among the crowd, drowning Mokou out. Soon, the disturbance had risen to a dull sea of voices. Alice wasn’t quite sure where everybody was looking, until a shadow passed across her face.

She looked up, just in time to see Kanako descend into the center of the circle.

“Good news,” Kanako said, in a voice that pierced straight through the ruckus. “None of this is necessary.”

The announcement didn’t exactly calm the crowd down. Mokou raised a hand to hush them, and it still took the better part of a minute for it to taper off. Even then, she had to raise her voice as she asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means just what I said.”

Kanako turned toward the crowd, outstretching her arms and flaring her wings to frame herself from behind. In one of her uplifted hands, she had a tightly-rolled newspaper. She gave it a shake. “People of Gensokyo! The tengu would like to announce that we’ve captured the amanojaku fugitive, Seija Kijin, and taken the Miracle Mallet from her. The path into the future has been secured.”

“And should we really believe that—”  
“I’d be very interested to know how—”

Alice and Yukari both shoved their ways forward into the center of the circle. And, they both stopped, standing across from each other and cutting off at the same point.

Kanako’s smile grew. “With the resources of the tengu, something like this is trivial. Of course, the mallet is only half of the solution. I’m sure that most of you don’t know this, but there were two people responsible for breaking Gensokyo. One, which we just captured. And the other criminal…” Kanako gestured toward Yukari’s shoulder, where Shinmyoumaru sat. “… whom the Hakurei shrine has been harboring all along.”

The crowd exploded into conversation again. Even this close, Alice almost couldn’t hear Yukari as she said, “This is a very interesting game you’re playing at, Kanako.” Despite that, the ice in her voice was palpable.

Kanako ignored her, addressing the crowd. “Fixing this will require us to bring the culprit that Yukari is housing together with the mallet. But, this makes the second time that the Hakurei shrine has hidden the truth from you. Twice now that Yukari has thought that she knows better than the rest of Gensokyo. Knowing that, we can’t in good faith give the mallet to Yukari. The power to fix this belongs to those with the wisdom to use it for the benefit of all. The tengu nation would like to humbly ask you to place your faith in us, rather than the humans who have misled you.”

“Kanako!” Alice stepped forward. She wasn’t even sure if anybody beyond a meter away could hear her over the roar of the crowd now. “You can’t seriously mean to hold Gensokyo’s survival hostage like that.”

Again, Kanako ignored the interruption. “In our generosity, we’re giving the Hakurei shrine three days to turn the fugitive over to us, at which point we’ll do what is necessary to save Gensokyo. You can, of course, read all the details and more in today’s edition of the Bunbunmaru News, available at a fine bookstore near you.”

Looking as smug as ever, Kanako shoved her rolled-up newspaper into Yukari’s hands. Looking out over the crowd, she doffed her tokin. And, in a gust of wind from her wings, she took off.

The crowd broke into absolute chaos. Somewhere, Mokou was shouting and trying to retake control of the situation. Alice met Yukari’s eyes, giving her a tight smile. “Well,” she said. “I do hope that you’re happy with yourself.”

* * *

“Man,” Komachi said. “That was brutal.”

Yukari didn’t respond. Her fingers were clenched so tightly around the newspaper that she could feel it crumpling between them. It was rare for her to get angry. Ran’s teachings spoke of always letting logic make decisions, rather than getting pulled around by one’s emotions. Yukari liked to think that she managed it more often than not. Most of the time, she acted very deliberately.

But damn, it would be satisfying to punch a tengu right about now.

“And she called me a criminal!” Shinmyoumaru squeaked from Yukari’s shoulder. “How rude can you get?!”

The little extra annoyance that sparked was enough to stir Yukari from her thoughts. She reached up with her free hand, prodding Shinmyoumaru with a fingertip and nearly knocking her over. “And what else should we call somebody who broke reality itself, do you think?”

Shinmyoumaru wobbled, flailing to keep herself up right. “It would have been great if it had worked!”

“And did you give any thought to what would happen if it didn’t?”

“Well, yeah. That’s why we didn’t change ourselves.”

“How noble of you.”

“So what’re you going to do?” Komachi asked.

“I’m still considering that.”

“Huh, really?” Komachi shot her a glance. “Rare for you to not have a plan already.”

“Yes, well, it’s rare for an entire nation of youkai to give me an ultimatum in front of half of Gensokyo, too.”

“I guess that’s true. Must be pretty serious if they’re willing to take a risk like that. The other youkai would be gunning for them for the next decade even if they pulled this off without a hitch.”

“Mmh.”

“Ah well. Nothing to do but deal with it. … what’d that paper she gave you say about it, anyway? Any more details in there?”

“Oh, good idea,” Yukari said dryly. “Let’s see what lies they’ve cooked up for us today, shall we?”

The paper was, bizarrely enough, tied shut with a piece of twine. Just one more frustrating little obstacle in Yukari’s path today. She tugged it free and tossed it to the ground. With the pressure released, the paper popped outward, unrolling a bit in her grasp.

And before being rolled, it had been folded a few times. She unfolded it once, twice, three times…

“Hey,” Shinmyoumaru said, leaning forward to peer down at it. “What’s that?”

Yukari glanced down. In the center of the newspaper was a small paper packet. On the front was written: ‘ _DO NOT OPEN OUTSIDE. You are being watched. Make up an excuse to get the other incident resolvers together. You’ll need the help._ ’

Yukari stared at it for a few seconds before carefully folding the paper closed around it again.

“Huh?” Komachi said. “What’s what?”

“It’s nothing,” Yukari said. “But, Komachi, could you head back and grab Alice, Hatate, and Rin? Perhaps Mokou too, if she’s available. I think tonight would be a good night for drinking.”

“… huh? This really doesn’t seem like the time, does it? I mean, don’t get me wrong, a drink does sound pretty good after all of that… Something makes me think Alice might not be too happy to get an invitation from you right now, though.”

“Yes, but I have that good sake at the shrine right now, remember?” She shot Komachi a pointed glance. “You have to understand, I’d _very much_ like to drink with them tonight. I hope that you can impress that fact upon them.”

This time, Komachi apparently caught onto the emphasis. “… oh, right. You know what? You’ve got a point. Nothing to do but drink on a night like this. One surly magician, coming right up.” More quietly, she added, “Really hope you know what you’re doing.”


	16. Chapter 13

Rin crossed her arms and scowled at the door to the Hakurei shrine. The door, of course, was an inanimate object. It couldn’t scowl back. But she _felt_ like it was, and that was what mattered.

“So really, are ya gonna tell us what this is about?”

“I already said,” Komachi said, with a tired sigh. “Yukari really, really wants this drinking party. That’s all I know, myself.”

“S’just, usually ya don’t drink with someone after you leave ‘em to die in a cave. … well, real hard to drink with them if they die, but you know what I mean.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Hatate said. “Yukari’s fought, like, two-thirds of the people in Gensokyo at this point, right? If everyone took it personally, she’d probably be dead by now.”

“This definitely _was_ personal,” Alice said… and then sighed. “… but I’m the one who made it personal in the first place by sabotaging her festival. Maybe the time has come to make amends.”

“You guys know she can probably hear you, right?” Komachi rapped on the shrine door. “This thing isn’t that thick.”

“Let ‘er hear all she wants, sis. Ain’t no secret that the only thing stoppin’ me from stabbing her in the kidneys is it’d annoy Lady Satori.” Rin glanced to Alice. “Anyway, ya sure, hon? If you really think it’s for the best, I ain’t gonna stop ya, but…”

“At this point, I’m not going to be satisfied until I know why she dragged us here, anyway.” Alice seemed to have made up her mind. Stepping forward, she opened the door to the shrine. Everyone else filed in behind her.

Yukari was at her familiar spot in the shrine’s front room, kneeling in front of her table. Despite the fact that it had been a week or two since Rin’s last visit, things looked like they’d barely changed. The only notable new feature was… a few boxes and scraps of wood which had been fashioned together into a tiny, makeshift house. A tiny person, accordingly, was sitting on the front step, making conversation with Yukari when they entered.

“You know, Yukari,” Alice said. “If you want doll-sized furnishings, I’m sure that Marisa would be happy to sell you some.”

“It’s always a pleasure to see you too, Alice.”

“Wow,” Hatate said. “You really found a tiny girl in there, huh? I figured that was, like… a metaphor or whatever.”

The inchling was already bristling. “I’m not tiny! You’re all just too big. And I have a name, you know!”

“No, I don’t know, in fact.” Alice slipped down to sit across from Yukari. “And whose fault is that, Yukari?”

Yukari held her gaze, giving a tight smile. “I called you here because I’d like to propose a truce. I have a proposal for all of you, and I think that you’ll agree it’s for the best if we work together.”

Rin flopped down against the wall, a meter or so away from where Komachi was already squishing up her phantom half into a suitable pillow. “Not gonna tell her about how ya stole her and left Alice to die, huh?”

“Rin, I really don’t think that—”

“Hey, wait!” The inchling strode forward, hurrying down onto the table to get as close as she could to Rin. She was only capable of closing the gap by a matter of centimeters before she reached the edge, but she still did her best. “What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Yes, Yukari,” Alice said, “why don’t you tell her? After all, a good alliance should be founded in trust.”

Yukari shot the two of them a look of annoyance, but capitulated. “Well, Shinmyoumaru, the truth is that Alice is the one who retrieved you from the castle. She collapsed outside, though, and I carried you the rest of the way to civilization.”

“Huh…”

“Oh, that’s a very streamlined way to put it,” Alice said. “I personally might have mentioned the fact that I also spent days mapping out the caves to find that castle. And that while Yukari took _you_ out, she was content to leave me behind.”

“You’re slightly harder to carry through kilometers of tunnels. I did send Rin to retrieve you. And while we’re being entirely _honest_ about things, does everybody know the whole story of what happened at my fest—”

“Hey! Hey. Ladies.” Komachi rolled onto her side, freeing her phantom half. It darted up to hover over in the air, right above the table and blocking their line of sight to each other. “From where I’m sitting, you’ve both been hard-headed assholes lately. So how about we fast-forward past all the arguing and you two kiss and make up?”

“If Alice kisses Yukari, I gotta kiss her too,” Rin said. “That way we’re equal.”

The two of them sat in stubborn silence for a few seconds, while Shinmyoumaru turned to look suspiciously up at them. “So is anybody here not a lying weirdo?!”

“Hey, we wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t break the world,” Komachi said.

“You can’t just blame everything on me!”

“We can, in fact,” Yukari said. “And will continue to do so. Komachi is right, though. I didn’t call you here to have an argument. We have…” She raised her hand, with a folded piece of paper held in it. “… important matters to discuss.”

“Gonna read us yer poetry?” Rin asked.

“Shockingly, I have something even better.”

* * *

 _Forgive the melodramatic presentation,_ said the letter from Kanako, _but there’s no way for me to do this stealthily. Making so much noise that it hid my intentions was the only other option that I could find._

_I’ll make it brief: If you haven’t figured it out by now, the tengu are spying on you and your friends. We’re very good at it, so I’ll take it as a compliment if you haven’t noticed. We’ve known about the current incident almost since you discovered it yourself, and I think you can guess how we knew that you’d acquired the inchling girl. If you’re outside, assume that somebody is listening to you. If you’re in public, assume that your words are being recorded. Indoors, in private, you’re probably safe. Even a tengu has to get pretty close to hear through a wall, and we haven’t yet been instructed to take that risk._

_But, you’re probably wondering why I gave you this in the first place. That’s very simple: I’d like you to stop us._

_This incident was bound to attract the attention of the great tengu from the start. Only a few of us tengu are accounted for in Akyuu’s records of the previous Gensokyo. The rest of us, as far as we can tell, were minor youkai. The great tengu are proud. The implication that they were even intended to be lesser creatures is nearly heretical. They won’t rest until this incident is resolved._

_If that was the only concern, though, I wouldn’t have taken the risk of telling you about all of this. Before, the great tengu were content to keep tabs on your movements. Now, though, they know that the Miracle Mallet has already changed Gensokyo once, and it seems to be the only way to fix this. They aren’t about to leave such a duty to humans. They're intent on being the ones giving orders to your inchling friend when the time comes, and they’re willing to disrupt Gensokyo’s balance of power to do so. And why wouldn’t they? If the Miracle Mallet has the power to remake Gensokyo, then it can erase whatever sins they commit. If they get to use it, I don’t think they’ll give it up easily. I can barely tolerate them giving orders to the tengu. If they ran all of Gensokyo, I don’t think it would end well for any of us._

_I’d prefer not to be doing this. I’m loyal to the tengu as a people, of course. But this goes beyond our usual scheming. It’s about time for somebody to teach these conceited old men a lesson._

_If I act openly, my insubordination will be discovered quickly. I think I’m better positioned to help you out from here, anyway. When the tengu learn of whatever plans you make—and we will—I’ll do everything I can to help them along. Sanae will be on guard duty when you approach the mountain, and won’t raise an alarm. We’ll see to it that only your public conversations get recorded. And so on. To aid you with your plans, enclosed you’ll find..._

Yukari stopped reading at that point. There were still a couple more paragraphs, but there were details in there that she’d rather keep to herself. Details that nobody else would need to know to play their part in her plan. What they did need to know was…

She slipped another piece of paper onto the table. “A map of the tengu village. The building where Seija and the mallet are being held is marked here, on the southwestern corner.”

Everyone leaned in to take a look.

“So, what,” Hatate said. “Are you, like, proposing that we do a heist kind of thing?”

“Oh, man, I always wanted to do one of them!” Rin said. “Shootin’ people in the neck with sleepin’ darts and stuff, right?”

“Yeah, that kinda junk. Seems pretty cool, right?”

“As much as I’d like to do a ‘heist kind of thing,’ I don’t think it’s among our options. Even if their main sentry lets us pass by, sneaking into the tengu village unnoticed is out of the question. We’d be seen sooner or later. Rin, of course, could sneak in perfectly, but then there’s the matter of getting into the building itself. Judging by Kanako’s description of it, it’s secured fairly well. We’ll need some time to break into it, and it will be a noisy affair.”

“Then just what are you proposing?” Alice asked. “We can’t exactly fight the entire tengu nation.”

“Oh, can’t we, dear Alice? Well, perhaps _you_ can’t, but…”

“C’mon, Yukari, dial back the smug about ten percent.” Komachi waved a hand vaguely in her direction. “Why don’t you just tell us what you’re thinking, then?”

“What I’m proposing is this. A frontal assault is likely to fail. The tengu have enough skilled warriors to take on all of us and still have reserves left over. If, however, they were attacked from two sides at once, with both sides using completely different tactics… our odds still wouldn’t be good, but there’s a much better chance that one of us would succeed.”

“Not like you to hang your hat on the ‘not good odds’ option,” Komachi said. “Are you feeling alright? Head screwed on okay?”

“I’m perfectly fine. Even I’ll admit that I can’t come up with a foolproof plan for fighting what is essentially a small city-state.”

“If we could just get into the building quickly and quietly, we’d have much better options.” Alice crossed her arms, thinking. “Did she say what kind of protections are on it?”

“Kappa-made locks, and the walls and door are thick enough to, quote, ‘keep out an oni.’”

“So, easy.” Rin waved a hand dismissively in the air. “I just gotta sneak around and grab the key chains off the guards or whatever. Like in all them tengu manga! Real ironic, huh?”

“Unfortunately, I doubt it’s quite so easy,” Alice said.

“Hmm.” Yukari paused to consider that. “That comes up strangely often in outside world manga too. But have you ever seen anybody with an oversized key ring like that? Especially hanging off of the back of their belt?”

“It’s a cartoon thing or whatever,” Hatate said. “Like, when’s the last time you saw an anvil?”

“Anyway, judging by Kanako’s letter, there are only a few keys, and they’re held by high-ranking tengu. Somehow I doubt that they’re carrying them around all day for no good reason, either. And, finally, there’s a guard posted inside of the building, too. Even if you manage to sneak in silently, you’d need to deal with them… and presumably they chose somebody they expect to stand a chance against one of us.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, Yukari may be right here.” Alice pinched the bridge of her nose, already seeming tired from the prospect of planning a battle against the entire might of the tengu village. “If they’re expecting us, we have to assume that they have it under heavy surveillance. We’ll probably have to fight either way.”

“Aw, man, fightin’ every tengu at once, though.” Rin suddenly had a knife in her hands. She gave it a few thoughtful flicks into the air, toying with it. “That sounds fun as hell, don’t it? I might even break a sweat!”

“ _However._ If we’re taking half of the risk here, then we need to be involved in what comes next. If this works, I want Rin and I included when we use the mallet. No sneaking off to decide on Gensokyo’s fate by yourself.”

“I’ll make you an even better proposal,” Yukari said, spreading her hands. “Komachi and I will be one of the two teams. You, Rin, and Hatate will be the other. If your team wins, the mallet is yours. You will have sole credit for saving Gensokyo, as far as I’m concerned, and the final say on when and how the mallet is used, as long as Shinmyoumaru is okay with it. I trust that’s enough to motivate you?”

“It’s… suspiciously generous, I might even say.”

“Oh, that stings, Alice. Being so cruel to an old friend so soon after our reunion…”

“Hey, what about me?” Shinmyoumaru called up. “Where am I going?”

Yukari shot a skeptical look down at her. “Well, I don’t know that we’ll need to fight any mice.”

Shinmyoumaru bristled, reddening with outrage. “I’m descended from an oni-slayer, you know! Just because I’m not a giant doesn’t mean I can’t fight. And if you’re saving Seija and my mallet, I want in.”

“Then I propose that you go with Alice’s team. She can hardly claim that I’m sabotaging her if her team is twice the size of mine, now can she?”

“… okay, yeah,” Hatate said. “I’m kind of with Alice on this now. It’s pretty weird for you to be this nice. What’re you planning here?”

“The future of Gensokyo is at stake. As hesitant as I am to hand this kind of power over to Alice, I trust the tengu even less. If this is what it takes… well, I’m sure I’ll be satisfied either way. Mmh, now.” Yukari stretched, feigning a yawn. “Why don’t we say that we’ll attack at sunset tomorrow? Those of you on Team Alice, I’d suggest that you go plan your strategy.”

There were a few follow-up questions as people lingered, but soon, Alice’s team had convened and made their way outside. Yukari was left alone with only Komachi, who was still sprawled out using her phantom half as a pillow. She eyed Yukari from across the room. “There’s no way they don’t still think you’re up to something.”

“Of course they think that. This will work better if they do.”

“You’ve got to actually _be_ up to something, though. I know you.”

“Nothing at all.” With a deep yawn—a real one this time—Yukari stretched, arching her back. As she melted out of it, she said, “Why don’t we meet up tomorrow to talk strategy? I could use my rest.”

“You, uh, don’t think we need to make any plans tonight? Figure anything out _before_ the day we try taking on half the tengu at once?”

“Mmh, not particularly.” Yukari crawled over and flopped face-down on a cushion, getting comfy. “How complicated can it be, really?”

* * *

The front half of Alice’s house had been transformed into a war room.

Propped against the wall, a chalkboard showed a diagram of the tengu village, with the half-erased ghosts of rejected strategies lingering on its surface. Half a dozen tea cups and now-empty trays of sweets attested to a long and hungry night of planning.

It was four AM and everybody else looked exhausted. Everybody, at least, except Rin. As far as she was concerned, this was great. She usually had to shift her schedule around to be awake during the day if she wanted to get any social activities in. Now, everybody else was being forced onto _her_ turf. About time, really.

She took another sip of her tea, swishing it around as she looked at the latest diagram on the blackboard. “What about that hermit’s chisel? Y’know, lets her slip through walls n’ stuff? I find her, yoink it, n’ then I can slip right into that building, no worries. Still that guard to worry about, but I could get all, y’know…” She trailed off, dragging a finger across her throat.

“Don’t the hermits live sealed away in some invite-only hermit realm?” Alice said.

“Yeah, they’ve got a pocket dimension thing going,” Hatate said. “I visited it once. It’s pretty neat. … besides, Shou’s nice. You’d feel like a real jerk stealing from her, wouldn’t you?”

“If you’re talking about slitting throats, the risk of feeling like a ‘real jerk’ probably already applies.”

“Fine, fine.” Rin gave an exasperated shrug. “You just watch, though. Some day I’m gonna get to solve a whole incident myself just messin’ around in frozen time, and it’s gonna be great.”

“I’m sure that it will, dear.” Alice turned back to the blackboard, wiping it down with a cloth before continuing. “Putting together everything _else_ we’ve talked about, though… I propose that we approach from the west, with the sun at our backs. I’ll pick out some appropriate landmarks on the mountain to orient us tomorrow morning. Hatate and Rin will form the vanguard, appearing to assault the village head-on. They’ll then stage a fighting retreat, luring the tengu forces into open terrain. By that point, I should be hiding nearby, with Shinmyoumaru as my lookout. Once the tengu are exposed, I’ll blast them with as much firepower as I can, from the side or behind. While their formation is disrupted, all four of us will begin an all-out assault. When the fight appears to have turned in our favor, Rin will slip away and break into the building holding Seija, while the rest of us continue to serve as a distraction. As soon as we have the mallet, we’ll retreat, scattering to confuse their attempts to follow us. Once everybody is confident that they’ve lost any pursuit, we’ll reconvene at Kourindou. At that point, we’ll have both Shinmyoumaru and the mallet. We should take our chance as quickly as possible.”

“That’s a lot of words for ‘let’s fight them and then I’ll shoot them really hard,’” Hatate said.

“With less than a day to work with, and trying to attack a superior force, we can only complicate things so much.”

“This is nothing, anyway,” Shinmyoumaru said, piping up from her position on a windowsill. She’d taken up position in an abandoned teacup, using it as something between an armchair and a bathtub. “For inchlings, fighting stronger races is just something we do every day. A bunch of tengu should be a piece of cake compared to oni.”

“Yeah?” Hatate said. “Then what advice do you have for us, oh mighty warrior?”

“Um… stabbing them in the eyes usually works pretty good, I’ve found?”

“Ooh, yeah!” Rin pumped a fist in the air. “I like it!”

Alice stepped away from the blackboard, and barely made it to the couch before she slumped down. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t go around maiming people, personally. If we fix this, we’ll still have to deal with the fallout of whatever we do tomorrow.”

“Ain’t never found a problem that more eye-stabbin’ won’t fix.”

“It’s a…” Hatate trailed off, giving a deep yawn. Somewhere in there, she mumbled out the words ‘vicious cycle.’

“That’s half the fun, sis.”

“Mmh.” Alice crossed her arms and stared blearily at the chalkboard. “I wish we had more time to prepare. If we had time to observe the tengu patrols and gather resources…”

“Then you’d just spend the whole time worryin’.” Rin leaned over, nuzzling her face into Alice’s neck and giving it a few nibbles. “C’mon, I know you. Gettin’ it over with’s for the better. One of them situations ya can’t overthink too much, or you’ll chicken out.”

“Ripping off a bandage,” Hatate said.

“There’s worrying, and there’s preparing. I’m talking about the latter. If we could have you sneak into the tengu village and plant some explosives…”

“Wait, actually.” Rin perked up. “This is soundin’ fun again. What’m I blowin’ up?”

“They could make for some nice diversions. Nothing important or dangerous. Just enough to make them worry that there might be other attackers. But, it would take a few days for me to make them, and we don’t have a few days. Hmm. Perhaps if Marisa would lend me some of her explosive dolls…”

“Those things creep me out,” Hatate said.

“Nah,” Rin said, “it’s sick! Makin’ ‘em charge straight at ya and blow themselves to smithereens. That’s brutal as heck, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what’s creepy.”

“They’re too undisciplined, anyway. I don’t know if they’d even listen to… mmh… listen to...” Alice trailed off mid-sentence, letting out a deep yawn. Afterward, her eyelids slowly drooped downward. After a few seconds, she snapped them open again, looking momentarily confused until she remembered where she was at. “… listen to me.”

Rin sighed. These daylubbers. Seriously, how did any of them ever survive nighttime youkai hunts if they crumpled this quickly? “Alright, alright!” She rose to her feet, then grabbed Alice’s hand, tugging her up off of the couch. “This keeps goin’ any longer, you girls are gonna pass out. We can’t be havin’ that. So Hatate n’ the pipsqueak, why don’t you get comfy out here, and I’ll take the lady of the house here back to her _boudoir_?”

“I guess that’s probably a good idea,” Hatate said.

“Who’re you calling a pipsqueak?!” shouted the pipsqueak.

She was easy enough to ignore. Alice didn’t put up any resistance as Rin led her through the house to her bedroom, then started stripping her. She was very businesslike about it, too, only stealing a few quick squeezes of choice bits. Alice eased under the covers with a sigh, and Rin quickly took off her own clothes, blew out the candles, and joined her. Rolling over, she lazily looped an arm around Alice’s waist and pulled herself close. Alice gave a lazy murmur and sidled up against her.

For a few minutes, she even dared to believe that Alice might actually sleep.

A soft sigh announced that wasn’t going to be the case. “Mmh.” Alice shifted in place. “You know…”

“Well, if I know, there ain’t nothin’ to talk about. Go to sleep, dummy.” She tried to leave it at that, but couldn’t quite let herself. Reaching over, she brushed some of Alice’s hair out of her face. “Sure you’re really up for a fight tomorrow…?”

“I don’t know that we have a choice.”

“What I’m sayin’ is… we had that fight at Mokou’s house. Then you spent a few days runnin’ around Gensokyo and plotting against Yukari. Then you fought Yukari and spent half a week crawling around in caves, just about died down there, and went right back to running around Gensokyo all day. And you ain’t the hardiest girl to begin with. I don’t want anything to happen to you… and we ain’t spent much time together lately…”

Even in the dark, Rin could feel Alice wince guiltily. “I’m sorry. As soon as all of this is resolved, we’ll take an entire day to go somewhere together. I promise.”

“Gonna hold you to that.” Rin pressed a few kisses to Alice’s shoulder, settling in. “Now stop worryin’ and get some rest.”

* * *

The sun was beating down. It was getting warmer every day, as the heart of summer grew closer by the second. There were a matter of hours left before the assault on the tengu village, and they hadn’t spoken a single word of planning.

So, of course, rather than getting down to business, Yukari had wanted to meet at the tea shop.

Komachi swished her own drink, looking out over the selection of sweets that they’d ordered. There were plenty of options, although there was no way to know what fillings were in those ones at the end… Today was a day for boldness, though. She plucked one up and popped it into her mouth. Rather than the fruit or bean paste that she’d been hoping for, she instead got matcha. 

Horrible choice. What kind of weirdo would want to snack on tea while drinking tea? She quickly washed it down, and grabbed another sweet as a chaser. It was just the responsible thing to do.

“So anyway,” she said, “why did you only want to meet me now? And why here? Shouldn’t we, uh…” She glanced around the nearby rooftops, trying to spot any conspicuous tokin. The tengu were rarely quite so unstealthy unless they wanted to be, but due diligence and all. “… shouldn’t we, you know, be inside?”

“Hmm? Surely you aren't that intimidated by them.” Yukari took a sip of her tea before continuing. “The tengu have a good information-gathering network, but they aren’t omniscient. There’s no reason we can’t talk outside and enjoy the weather.”

“Yeah, but… they did pick up on the whole incident and all. Seems like they’re keeping pretty close watch on you, at least.”

“It’s not something to worry about, Komachi. I have it all under control.”

“If you say so. So what’s the plan, then? I’ve been thinking about it some, but kinda hard to figure out how to fight half the mountain, you know?”

“Hmm? No, not hard at all.” Yukari flashed a smug smile. “I know exactly how to approach it. But, then, I also know a few small facts that you don’t. For example, that a good bit of what I told everybody else last night were lies.”

“… some day all your lying is going to come back to bite you on the ass, you know. Shouldn’t the gods disapprove of that kind of thing anyway? Doesn’t strike me as very shrine maidenly.”

“Of course not. Lady Ran encourages me to fight intelligently. She’d be pleased to see me using my mind as a weapon just as much as my body. But, yes. Alice doesn’t need to know the entire truth. For example… I’m fairly sure that I can get into the vault. Since when has any sort of barrier stopped the Hakurei shrine maiden?”

Komachi sighed and tossed back the rest of her tea, then reclined in her chair, staring up toward the sky. “So what I’m hearing is that you were just pretending to play fair back there, and don’t have any intention of letting Alice’s team reach the mallet first.”

“And I’m sure that I can trust you to not run off and spill this particular secret, hm?”

“… you waited this late to talk about all of this just so I wouldn't have time to tell them, didn't you?”

“No comment. But yes, Gensokyo’s safety is my responsibility. Do you think I’m really about to hand the ability to alter it on a whim to Alice and Rin? _I_ will be the one to decide how the mallet is used, and then I’ll get rid of it before it causes any more problems.”

“I think you just like making yourself feel smart.” Komachi sighed, but dropped the subject. Yukari had always proven remarkably resilient in the face of moral lectures, and she didn’t see any reason for that to change today. “Anyway, so what? We can get into the shack easier than I thought. That still doesn’t change much.”

“Of course it does. I myself might not normally be able to sneak through the tengu village unnoticed, but if there’s a fight happening…”

“… you’re going to use Alice and Rin as distractions while you break into the building, aren’t you?”

“Oh, that’s such a cruel way to put it. I prefer to think of it as teamwork, except that they don’t know we’re on the same team.”

Komachi’s only response was a long sigh, which tapered off into a groan of frustration.

“What? Don’t you believe that I can pull it off?”

“Nah, it’s not that. Just, I always though it’d be okay when you died, because you’d still end up in the Netherworld, and we could hang out for a few more centuries before you reincarnate. I’m starting to think that’s not how it’s gonna work, though. When you die, they’re going to have to dig up some special hell for absolute bastards to throw you in for a couple millennia.”

“Well, then I just need to never die.”

Komachi eyed Yukari. Humans seeking immortality was a big no-no, but if anybody in Gensokyo was self-important, stubborn, and smart enough to pull it off, it was… well, okay, it was Yukari _and_ Alice. Probably a race to see which one of them got there first. “… anyway, where do I come in? Think it’ll take two of us to fight whoever’s guarding the mallet?”

“Not at all. What I _do_ need, however, is somebody on the outside. Even playing this as ruthlessly as I am, there’s still a chance that I’ll fail. If we’re all captured, I’d like to have a friend out here who might be capable of rescuing us. And, of course, to look after the shrine for a while, assuming the tengu don’t immediately rewrite reality.”

“… really.”

“Shouldn’t you be thanking me? You’ll be the only one of us kept out of harm’s way during all of this.” Yukari reached into a sleeve, pulling out a tightly-folded piece of paper, and offered it over. “Here are all of the instructions for taking care of the shrine, in case it ends up being a long term sort of thing. Nothing you don’t already know, I’m sure, but read over it when you get home just in case?”

Komachi stared at the paper for a few seconds before reluctantly accepting it. “If this is all part of your secret plan or something, I’m going to be pissed, you know.”

“I can only wish that my plans extended that far,” Yukari said, with a halfhearted shrug. “We’re taking on Gensokyo’s single most powerful unified faction in an all-out attack. Even I can only do so much. If this fails… well, let’s hope that the tengu are feeling benevolent in that case.”

* * *

Suwako Himekaidou stared down at her camera, lightly fanning herself with her other hand as she sank into a deep annoyance.

Damn that Kanako. If she’d never agreed to help with this whole scheme of hers, she’d be halfway back to the tengu village by now.

She’d heard the whole conversation, of course. She was sitting across the street at a different restaurant, but Yukari hadn’t even bothered to lower her voice. A human could have made out half of it from here. For a tengu it was a piece of cake. She’d missed a word here and there, but she had a solid enough grasp of everything that Yukari had just said.

This was a problem.

Today’s spying wasn’t casual, _personal_ spying. This was the more formal sort, something she’d been assigned to by the higher-ups. The kind where she had to disguise herself as a human and take it seriously. She needed to file a report when she got back. And odds were good that they had somebody else on the same assignment today, a bit of extra redundancy.

She needed to file a report, she wasn’t sure if she could safely lie, and Yukari had just spilled her entire damn plan in public. The exact thing Kanako said she’d warned her not to do. At least the damn foolish human had enough sense not to incriminate Kanako while she was blurting everything out, or Suwako would have already started looking for a nice spot to lay low for a few centuries.

“Guuuuh.” Flipping her camera closed, she flopped back in her seat. In front of her, a few dishes sat empty. At least she’d gotten some cash to cover her food while she was on this assignment. A free meal in exchange for sitting around eavesdropping would normally be a pretty good deal, if she weren’t currently stressing out about her assignment, whether or not to lie to her superiors, and/or the future of Gensokyo.

“I want a driiink,” she whined to the air, to no response.

So: She could leave this conversation out of her report, and hope that she was the only one assigned to watch Yukari or Komachi today. Or… well, Kanako had told her to be honest. Lying wasn’t supposed to be _necessary_ , since the humans were supposed to be showing discretion. They’d been told about it, so really: how could anybody blame her for reporting on it? For all she knew, this was part of Kanako’s plan too. She could definitely sympathize with Komachi’s annoyance at being jerked around by people who were too clever for their own good.

The more she thought about it, the more she felt like she should report it. The great tengu needed to be knocked down a few pegs, but Kanako needed to make her damn schemes more transparent, too. So. Whatever. Put this on her report, turn it in, and Kanako could deal with the fallout if it wasn’t what she wanted. That sounded fine. Making things into Kanako’s problem would be a nice change of pace.

With a final annoyed sigh, she pushed herself to standing and took off toward Youkai Mountain.


	17. Chapter 14

The staging area that Alice had chosen was half a kilometer northwest of the tengu village. It was an inconvenient area to get to, on the far side of Youkai Mountain, where only the more solitary sort of youkai roamed. More than once, she’d heard something big rustling through the brush in the near distance. So far, none of them had been reckless enough to investigate the group.

The remoteness had benefits too, though. The vast majority of traffic to Youkai Mountain would be from the east. That was the direction to the heart of Gensokyo, after all, and the way that all the major paths ran. There weren’t any significant patrols on this side of the mountain. The western end of the village would hopefully be relatively unguarded, too. With any luck, Yukari would bear the brunt of the fight.

Alice didn’t make a habit of relying on luck, though, which was why she was currently doing a long series of calculations in a heavily-stained notebook she’d brought along.

So: Assume that she could find an ambush point behind the tengu that she wanted to attack, and Rin and Hatate were twenty meters beyond them. If she opened the mini-hakkero’s aperture to its widest setting, set the focal length to minimum, and dialed the power to 60%… in theory, the beam should reach a fifty-meter width in a short distance, but also lose most of its intensity in only a few dozen meters. On paper, at least, she could wipe out half of a tengu formation in one shot, and her friends on the far side wouldn’t get much more than a light tan.

Or, assume that she attacked perpendicularly and didn’t need to worry about friendly fire. Aperture size 4 and maximum power would give her a beam with an effective width of about sixty meters, and a much more effective payload. If she went a step further and adjusted the focal length…

“Why are you drawing so many weird pictures?” Shinmyoumaru asked, from her spot on Alice’s shoulder.

“They’re not pictures, they’re diagrams. And I’m trying to decide how to approach this fight. We only have a few minutes left, so this is our last chance to make preparations.”

“Yeah, don’t sweat it, Alice gets all fussy with numbers n’ stuff when she’s nervous,” said Rin, whose preparations, judging by her current activities, mostly consisted of making tiny cairns from rocks she found on the ground.

“Seems pretty rough being a witch and all,” said Hatate, whose preparations involved a handheld electronic device that was making some decidedly not tactical-sounding bloops and bleeps. “I’ve just gotta make sure I have a jillion ofuda before I head into a fight, and I’m all set there.”

“Well, if any gods offer me youkai-slaying power in exchange for my services, I’ll be sure to consider it,” Alice replied dryly. “Until then, I need to think about these things from time to time.”

She looked over the diagrams she’d sketched up, quickly double-checking some of the math. It wasn’t as easy as she would have liked. She’d gotten to bed late, been too stressed to sleep much, and woken up five hours later. The numbers kept trying to slip out of her head. But after redoing a few calculations, she decided to go for the longer-range option. No way to be sure just how the tengu would arrange themselves. Lifting the mini-hakkero, she quickly dialed in the new settings, then shot out a quick burst of flame to ensure that it was in working condition.

“I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she conceded. “Is everybody else?”

“Yep. Just like I said, all set n’ ready to stab some birds,” Rin said.

Hatate tapped out a few final frantic button presses on her device, then tucked it away and gave her gohei a halfhearted flick in the air. “I’m good, yeah.”

Alice turned her eyes to her shoulder. “Shinmyoumaru?”

Shinmyoumaru solemnly drew her needle-sword. “I’m…!” She thrust it downward, preparing to drive it into the ground at her feet, before apparently remembering that ‘the ground,’ in this case, was Alice’s shoulder. Instead, she sheepishly brought the tip to rest against the cloth of her outfit. “… I’m ready.”

“Remember, this initial attack is only to draw them out. Save your strength for the actual fight. After the Master Spark, we should attempt to defeat the remaining forces as quickly as possible. If reinforcements arrive, Rin will focus on harrying the enemies we’ve already been fighting, and the rest of us will turn our attentions to the newcomers. If anything goes wrong, retreat and regroup at Kourindou. Are there any questions?”

“You already talked about it forever last night!” Shinmyoumaru squeaked. “Let’s fight some giants!”

“For once I’ve got to agree with the shortie,” Hatate said.

Alice repressed the slightest flare of annoyance as she turned to walk into the forest, heading upward toward the tengu village. “You’ll thank me when this fight has ended in our favor. Now, it’s only a few minutes until sunset. Get into position.”

* * *

Hatate’s ‘position,’ according to Alice, was up in the air, hovering with Rin just above the level of the tengu village itself. Even from this perspective, only bits and pieces of it were visible. What she could see, though, was the same as always: Broad avenues laid out in an orderly grid, shielded from view in most directions by carefully cultivated trees. In a lot of ways, it looked so much more _modern_ than the human village below.

She’d seen it several times before, but this time she had an extra fact to make it interesting: According to Akyuu, she was supposed to live there. She was supposed to _be_ a tengu.

There wasn’t really time to dwell on that, though. Even just hovering there, she could already see the village reacting to their presence. Sentries in well-hidden watchtowers were having hurried conversation. A messenger sprinted away from one, heading toward the center of the village with superhuman speed. They’d gotten attention, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that was going to lure out half the tengu forces.

“So, like…” Hatate gestured toward the village below. “What’re we supposed to do here? Kinda weird for Alice to get all anal over everything else but not figure out how to piss them off, isn’t it?”

“Annoying folks is easy, sis.” Rin rolled her shoulders, limbering up. “Wanna give it a shot, or should I show ya how it’s done?”

“I can do it, jeez! Just, uh, like, give me a second.”

Hatate crossed her arms and stared down at the village in thought. The flurry of activity they’d set off was escalating, but slowly. At this rate, it was going to take a few minutes. And the tengu didn’t exactly seem all that angry—she needed to lure out their army, not earn a strongly-worded rebuttal from a senior representative. She was going to have to provoke them.

She drifted closer, bringing herself to within a dozen or so meters of the nearest guard post. “Hey!” She waved her gohei overhead, brandishing it threateningly. “Hey! Um! I’m gonna beat you all up, okay?”

The two tengu glanced toward her. Their hushed conversation seemed to grow more urgent.

“Hey, tengu!” She thought about some good insults for tengu, but found herself lacking at the moment. Um. In slight desperation, she channeled a bit of energy into her gohei and slapped it against her palm, producing a sharp, powerful clap. “Tengu! Come out to plaaaay!”

A hundred meters away, a small contingent of wolf tengu were advancing uncertainly toward her from the center of the village. That was a start.

But it wasn’t enough. Now Hatate was just getting frustrated. Whipping her gohei upward, she thrust it into the air. Energy gathered at the tip, and a single translucent white crow, the size of a dinner plate, shot up into the air. It exploded once it was well above the treetops, letting loose a blast that reverberated across the mountainside for a few seconds. “Hey! Pay attention to me!”

“Y’know we’re tryin’ to get them to attack us, not give ‘em a fireworks show, right?” Rin asked, hovering into position next to her.

“Yeah, well! They keep ignoring me. I don’t see you having any better ideas.”

“Oh, I've got ‘em. Stand back.”

Hatate held her ground for just a moment before shifting backward with a huff. Rin, meanwhile, was drifting further down. She continued until she was barely out of arm’s reach of one of the guard towers, close enough to single out one of the sentries with an accusing finger. “Hey! You!”

The guard looked up, readying her sword. Before she could come up with an appropriate response, Rin continued. “Tell yer bosses they got five minutes to get out here, or I’m gonna rip out their skulls tonight n’ start a collection! Polish ‘em all, real pretty-like!”

This time, she didn’t give the guard a moment to reply. She simply flickered in the air. One moment, Rin was hovering there, improbably wearing an overly-frilly maid uniform and shouting belligerent threats at some low-ranking guard. The next moment, the air around her was heavy with knives: Hundreds of them, hanging in haphazard bunches wherever she’d released a handful.

They seemed to linger there, menacing, for just a second. Then, they slashed down like a steel monsoon. The air filled with a deafening roar as a torrent of blades shredded the treetop canopy. As they started impacting the wood of the guard post itself, the sound escalated to a horrifying cacophony. Any one knife would have barely made a dent, but the sheer weight of them was a threat if nothing else. The first handful bounced off. Soon, there was a splintered hole in the roof. One of the supporting beams was chipped away by a series of subsequent impacts. In a squealing, crackling, groaning protest, it buckled under the weight of the rest of the structure. The tengu within were already scrambling out as the guard post collapsed into a pile of abused lumber.

The village didn’t seem quite so calm in the aftermath. The air was filled with distant, shouted orders. An alarm bell sounded, soon followed by two more. The armed wolf tengu that Hatate had been eyeing were now hurrying, springing into the air as another group of them rushed outside.

“See, sis.” Rin briefly vanished, as did all of the daggers below. When she reappeared, she was slipping the last one back under her skirt. “Ain’t no use half-assin’ these things.”

* * *

On the far side of the tengu village, Yukari was biding her time.

She wasn’t sure just what Alice’s strategy was here. She preferred not to know, really. The less similar their approaches were, the better this would work. She’d heard an explosion, followed by a distant sound like a falling tree. Now, alarm bells were ringing, and the village was sounding altogether livelier.

She yawned and leaned back, settling against the tree behind her. In theory, Alice probably already had enough attention to make this work. She could head up into the village whenever she wanted to. But, no reason not to wait another minute or two. There was never a bad time to let Alice Kirisame squirm a bit and learn some humility.

A few more explosions. Some more urgent shouts. A series of staccato beats, the now-somewhat-familiar sound of a hundred or so daggers stabbing some unfortunate surface.

Yukari fanned out her throwing needles in one hand and counted them out. All present and accounted for, wonderful. One looked like it had gotten bent in a recent encounter. She’d have to fix that. Or, more likely, convince Komachi to both take it to the blacksmith to be fixed, and pay for it herself.

After yet another explosion, she begrudgingly accepted that, no matter how fun she was having imagining Alice being pummeled by a dozen or so experienced tengu warriors, she should probably get moving.

She still didn’t rush. She took her time as she headed up the hillside, hovering just above the speed of a light jog. It wasn’t far to the nearest buildings, but this end of the village seemed mostly abandoned. Probably all indoors or off fighting Alice. She only saw a few pedestrians out and about, and they were all gawking at the signs of the battle on the other side of the village. A yamabushi tengu lowered his gaze from the spectacle for long enough to spot her. She blew him a kiss and moved on.

There weren’t any real obstacles between her and the building housing the mallet, even though she needed to travel through half of the village to get there. It was a pretty unassuming-looking place, just another modest building in the middle of a dozen shops and storehouses. If she hadn’t reviewed the diagram before coming here, she might have needed to stop to pick it out. Even from a few meters away, though, it was hard to miss the fact that the place was locked up tight. The door looked like it weighed more than she did, and a bar of doubtlessly kappa-made steel was braced across it, secured with an equally intimidating lock.

She wasn’t even halfway across the street when movement caught her eye from above.

The evening sky was rapidly darkening as the sun sank below the horizon, but the silhouette of a crow tengu was still hard to mistake. No other race could ever look that irritatingly confident in silhouette form.

“The Hakurei shrine maiden.” The tengu stepped off the edge of the building. She appeared to fall to the ground normally, but landed without a sound. “I’m disappointed. I really expected better from you.”

“I’m not sure what you mean. I’m just having a relaxing stroll to enjoy the weather.”

“Shameimaru has spent years talking up your skill, and then when we actually have to confront you, you pull an amateur plan like this. I was at least hoping for something interesting.”

“Hmm, I see. Oh, but do we really have time to talk about this? It sounds like some troublemaker is making a bit of a racket over there. Please, don’t let me keep you if you need to go deal with that.”

“No, I don’t think so. I have very specific orders about what troublemaker I’m supposed to deal with today. So, human, if you think that the future you want is behind that door…”

Movement caught Yukari’s eyes from the corner of her vision. Other tengu were revealing themselves now, stepping out around buildings or lining up on the rooftop. What had previously seemed like a private confrontation had gained a dozen or so new actors. Judging by the number of swords present, every one of them was a professional warrior.

“Then please.” The tengu raised her hauchiwa, giving it a flick of the wrist before holding it overhead, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. “Come get it.”

* * *

“Alice! Hey!”

A sharp slap on the cheek snapped Alice to attention. It was a tiny one, though. Shinmyoumaru was glaring at her from centimeters away.

“… mmh?”

“You drifted off again.”

“Oh. I’m… I’m fine.” Alice rubbed at an eye with the backs of her fingers. “Did I miss anything? What’s the situation look like?”

Staying well-hidden before the ambush was a vital part of the plan. Alice’s blonde hair didn’t exactly blend in with the mountainside surroundings, and tengu had notoriously sharp senses. She needed to stay behind as much cover as possible. She didn’t have to _like_ it, though, especially since it left all of her updates filtered through…

“How do you expect me to know who all these people are?! There are a bunch of them over there.” Shinmyoumaru waved one hand vaguely toward the air in the direction of the tengu village. “And some more over there.” She waved in the other direction. “They’re fighting a lot. What more do you need to know?”

“How many of them? What’s their formation like? Where are Hatate and Rin?”

Shinmyoumaru looked down to her, then back up to the sky, frowning thoughtfully at it. “… which one’s Rin, again?”

“The one with red hair. Really, you should be able to identify _her_ if anybody.”

“Komachi has red hair too, you know!”

“Komachi should be with Yukari. Please try to focus, this is important.”

“Fine, fine.” Shinmyoumaru huffed and looked at the sky again. “Um, Rin? I think that’s Rin. She’s bouncing around a lot. That shrine maiden girl is way over there. There are, um… I don’t know. Maybe thirty tengu up there?”

“Does it seem like more are coming?”

Shinmyoumaru rose up on her tiptoes for an extra few millimeters of height, craning her neck and looking toward the village again. “I don’t see any!”

After a few seconds of indecision, Alice decided to just peek out for herself.

The sky was chaos. Seeing it for herself, it was hard to fault Shinmyoumaru for her confusion. A few dozen tengu were advancing through the air in a loose formation, which was growing more and more disjointed by the second as Rin flickered from spot to spot, sowing discord in the ranks. Beyond them, Hatate was holding the far end of the battle, bombarding them with enough flashy projectiles to discourage anybody from trying to close the distance with her. Here and there, individual tengu lunged forward, testing her defenses and driving her to retreat further from the village. Which, of course, was exactly what their plan called for. Hopefully the fact that it didn’t look intentional would help matters. Toward the village, a small group of tengu warriors were either standing guard or watching the spectacle, but they didn’t seem inclined to join the fight any time soon.

It seemed like as good of a chance as she was going to get.

“We should go.” Alice grabbed her broom, sliding it into position beneath her.

“Gotcha! Let’s stab some giants!”

Once Shinmyoumaru had hopped into position behind her, Alice leapt into the air, taking off at an almost vertical angle and soon blasting upward at full speed. It wasn’t the most comfortable ascent, but every second that she delayed now was another second where things might change, not necessarily toward the better.

As she approached the height of the battle itself, she pulled herself level. Coming to a stop, she leaned to the side, locking her legs around the broom as well as she could. “Please hold on.”

“Huh? Why am I—”

Alice didn’t need any time to calibrate or prepare. She’d already tweaked the mini-hakkero’s settings earlier, after all. She whipped it up, took just a moment to aim it at the heart of the tengu formation, and jammed the burn rate straight from zero to maximum.

She didn’t use maximum power very often. She considered it reckless, and a bit… excessive. Beating youkai with superior firepower didn’t mean anything. There would always be some youkai out there that could hit harder than any human, magically augmented or not. So, she was a bit unprepared for the results. The recoil nearly blew her hat off, and left her hair whipping wildly behind her. The beam that burst out was a good three or four meters wide even at the near end, filling her vision with scintillating, rainbow-tinged energy. Thrumming tremors filled the air and shook her down to her bones. It pushed her backward, and she had to brace herself, gritting her teeth, to not fall off of her broom.

Somewhere behind her, Shinmyoumaru gave a squeak of surprise and hunkered down.

Alice maintained the attack for as long as she could, dragging it side to side to swat a few of the scattering tengu with the beam. Soon, though, it was sputtering. Both the mini-hakkero’s fuel and her ability to control it were faltering. After swiping it toward one last unlucky cluster of tengu, she flicked the mini-hakkero off.

The last of the beam dissipated into the air. It left a deafening silence in its wake. Or, well, Alice hoped that was what it was, rather than damage to her eardrums. She didn’t dare to look down, but in her peripheral vision she could sense Shinmyoumaru scrambling to get back into position on the broom.

She’d managed to disrupt the tengu charge, at least. They were scattered and dazed in the aftermath of the attack. A few of them had retreated to the safety of the ground, where one was writhing around, trying to beat out a few feathers that had caught on fire. A dozen more, heavily singed, were retreating toward the village.

The remainders, though, were already regrouping. A few leaders barked orders, shepherding their scattered forces back into formation. Hatate and Rin were hovering too far away to make out their expressions, but she could tell by their body language that they were preparing for another fight.

As they regrouped, one group of tengu started moving purposefully in Alice’s direction. Keeping a wary eye on them, Alice rested the mini-hakkero on a thigh, tweaking its settings even as she refueled it. “Shinmyoumaru, would you prefer to stay on the broom, or fight on your own?”

“You’re way faster. You get me close, and I’ll jump off and stab them!”

“It’s a deal.” Ideally, Alice would never move into melee range, but she counted about two dozen tengu soldiers still standing, and fresh reinforcements starting to join the fray from the village below. These did not seem like they were going to be ideal circumstances. In front of her, the fight was already resuming, with the vanguards of the tengu force starting to test Hatate’s defenses. “We’re outnumbered eight to one. Please, show me those giant-slaying skills you keep bragging about.”

* * *

Yukari danced backward, weaving past four separate swinging blades, then leapt into the air.

“Really…” With a flick of her wrist, she called the yin-yang orbs up to hover in front of her, orbiting in a tight circle. Each one dragged a tail of ofuda behind it like a comet, and soon there was a whirling cloud in front of her. A small push of will was all it took to release them. A cone of ofuda exploded outward, filling the entire street.

The tengu weren’t prepared for such an attack. They stumbled backward, swatting at the air and clawing at ofuda that had stuck to their skin. Most of the group had been maneuvering around to surround her. Now, their coordination was in shambles. A handful had been untouched, and a few of them now rushed forward. With another flick of her hand, Yukari erected a barrier in front of her. The tengu dug their heels in, but couldn’t quite stop in time. All three slammed face-first into it and crumpled to the ground.

“That was very cute. I’m not sure if you understand the stakes here.” The crow tengu moved forward, stepping over one of her momentarily downed comrades and beckoning the few untouched ones to follow her. “My orders were very clear: If you can’t be brought in alive, the alternative is also acceptable.”

“Hmm? Oh, my. I’ll take more care than usual not to be stabbed by these swords you’re slashing at me, then.” Yukari returned the yin-yang orbs to their usual position orbiting around her waist. Her gohei in one hand, she pulled out a fistful of throwing needles with the other. “Does this seem more equal to you, then?”

“A human against a tengu is inherently unequal. At least this way, I won’t feel quite as guilty.”

For a few seconds, the two stared each other down. Behind the tengu, her comrades were slowly picking themselves up off the ground and peeling the last ofuda off their flesh, falling back into position behind her. Yukari’s hand twitched, ready to loose her throwing needles the moment that she saw any other movement across from her.

The two moved at the same time. The tengu swept her hauchiwa overhead, summoning a monsoon-force wind. Yukari slung a spread of needles toward the group. The two attacks traveled past each other seamlessly, leaving both sides scrambling to evade.

Yukari sprang backward just in time to avoid the worst of the debris kicked up by the wind. Stinging dust and pebbles still showered against her face, leaving her coughing and half-blind. She had a pretty good feel for the surroundings, though, and launched herself into the air just in time to avoid another attack. The second wave of wind slammed into the building behind her, jostling its entire structure and raising squeals of architectural protest. Even the wind that rebounded from it was forceful enough to nearly spin her around in the air.

She leaned into that recoil, letting it propel her across the battlefield and closer to the outskirts of the village. The cloud of dust the attack had kicked up was only just starting to subside, still blocking her view of the ground below. She attacked anyway, slinging a full stack of ofuda at the area where the tengu had been standing, and another on the rebound. “Was that your lethal option? I’m almost ashamed for you. If you’d like some pointers, I could—”

A pair of arrows shot up from the cloud. They were nowhere near her, rocketing straight up into the sky. They reached their apex hundreds of meters up, and their descent finally pointed them in her general direction… although really, this still seemed so misguided that she glanced down at the cloud again, certain that it had to be some sort of diversion.

The two arrows blurred, and became four.

The four arrows became eight. The eight arrows became sixteen. The sixteen arrows became thirty-two. The thirty-two arrows became… okay, her ability to recite the powers of two was quickly being derailed by the fact that, suddenly, the sky was arrows.

So, there were tengu with powers like that. Ah.

Yukari darted backward, but even the Hakurei shrine maiden’s famed dodging abilities weren’t about to let her avoid that. The sky was black, with only the barest specks of light peeking through. More importantly, it was crashing down on her. She didn’t have long to think. Dodging was out of the question. Even fleeing outside the radius of the attack entirely wasn’t a real option.

Yukari braced herself in the air, thrust her gohei overhead, and poured all her energy into a barrier. It sprang into existence just as the first arrows reached it.

The wave of arrows slammed into her makeshift shield with the force of a falling house. She was staggered in the air, swatted downward. The roar of arrowheads hammering the barrier was deafening, and wave after wave of them kept up the assault. She braced the barrier with her entire body, but that only left the force pounding into her with no outlet. Her feet soon touched the ground again, in the middle of a heap of rapidly-fading summoned arrows. After the last few of them ricocheted off her barrier, she dismissed it, her ears still ringing from the clamor.

The leader was already standing on a nearby roof, looking down at her with idle curiosity. More hurried footsteps were approaching, as another dozen tengu warriors rushed up from behind her. “Well? Surrender now and we’ll be lenient on you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have that luxury.”

The first rank of the reinforcements were already advancing on her. A line of five wolf tengu charged forward, hunkered down and bull-rushing behind their shields. She darted back and threw up a barrier; they slammed into it with a ring of metal, but rebounded painlessly. The second that the barrier dropped, they rushed forward again.

A moment too late, she noticed movement in the sky. The shield rush had been a distraction, a feint to drive her back into their actual attack. Another wave of hundreds of arrows was descending upon her.

Yukari flung an arm up and shielded herself with a barrier. Arrows slammed into it, ricocheting off to clatter to the ground around her feet. The wolf tengu, at least, were hanging back, avoiding the attack. She had a moment to gather her wits and take in the surroundings, at least.

Not that they were good. The archers had already repositioned. On two nearby rooftops, they were already standing, drawing their arrows back for another shot—this one, pointed right at Yukari. The wolf tengu were lowering their shields, preparing for a second charge, this time with swords. So: Even this impossible barrage of arrows, something that would fell an entire mortal army, was just to pin her down while they prepared. As soon as it dropped, she’d be hit from three sides before she had a chance to recover.

Three separate attacks was a bit much for even Yukari to dodge. As the barrage of arrows against her shield began to slow, she lashed one arm up and tossed a scattershot burst of ofuda. They spread out, blocking one archer’s view and threatening to blanket everything in a ten-meter radius when they impacted. She followed through on the motion, slapping the last few arrows aside with her barrier and springing after them. The tengu sprang their trap at the same moment.

As the wolf tengu rushed around to surround her, the remaining archer’s arrow lashed out. The shot was fast enough that she only threw up a barrier at the last second, leaving her staggering back from the impact. A wolf tengu on that side stepped forward, lashing out to skewer her before she could recover. In response, one of the yin-yang orbs smashed into the tengu’s knee. She yelped in pain, and the momentum of her attack carried her to the ground. The yin-yang orb rebounded to its position orbiting around Yukari.

Yukari coaxed the orbs further outward. Whirling around her a meter or so out, they formed a nice obstacle to deter any of the tengu from approaching. She met their eyes past it. “If you’d like to run while you have the chance, I would appreciate it. You’d be surprised by how difficult it can be to clean blood off of these things.”

One of them eyed her fallen comrade on the ground before looking to Yukari again. She lowered her stance, tightening her grip on her sword. “We have our orders, miss Hakurei, but if you come along quietly—”

And, she was cut off, as Yukari flung all the orbs outward. They caught the tengu around her in the ribs, in the stomachs, or in one unlucky case, right in the spine. Spiritual energy erupted from them in five or six near-simultaneous explosions, filling the air with white light and the subtle scent of seared youkai flesh. As the tengu collapsed, the orbs sprang back. They converged in front of her, merging back into a single orb by her hand.

“Now I have an hour of polishing to look forward to, thanks to you. I do hope you’re satisfied with yourself.” Yukari drove a boot into the side of one of the downed tengu, eliciting a groan of pain. It was fine. They were youkai.

Her eyes turned up toward the final archer on the rooftops, whose aim was looking increasingly uncertain. One accurately-thrown needle would be all it took, really. She pulled one back, getting a feel for the wind…

And, suddenly, there was a sword at either side of her neck.

“Ah.” Very carefully, Yukari glanced back. “Hello. I was wondering where you’d gotten off to. I suppose it was too much to hope that you’d fled at the sight of my vicious demeanor.”

“It’s nice to see that you’re insufferable even in defeat.” The squad leader’s gaze turned to a few of her comrades, who were just now picking themselves up from the ground. “Take her weapons. We need to get ready for her friends to join her too.”

* * *

“Advance!”

An entire squad of tengu charged forward, moving with surprising speed. It was a wall of shields, moving with the force of an entire mountain. Rin only managed to stop time at the last moment. She breathed a sigh of relief as it ground to a halt, leaving them hanging forebodingly a mere meter or so away.

“Dang, close one. Ya almost could’ve got me. Almost.”

Rin floated to the side, getting a better look at the formation. The phalanx of warriors who had been facing her down had two lines. The foremost was charging, while the ones behind them were tensed up, their shields held up and ready to move. Behind them, a group of four tengu were standing back-to-back, shields raised and… no weapons in their other hands? It was hard to tell for sure, with the shields and all. They weren’t moving and the leader was in the center of their formation, so probably her bodyguards or something. Weird.

This was all kind of flattering, though. So many people dedicated just to fighting her. The rest of the fight was bouncing around in a chaotic storm of lasers, but Rin had been singled out for her own little feature presentation.

Whatever. They all bled the same. Her tongue poked out in concentration as she lifted a knife, lining a throw right up with the nearest tengu’s head. It hung in the air mere centimeters from her fingertips. One by one, she picked out a nice exposed spot on every tengu in the two ranks that had been charging her, aiming a knife for each one. Once her bases were covered, she stepped around to inspect her handiwork from a few different angles, and added a knife here and there where it felt appropriate. This was an art, after all, not an exact science.

That done, she strolled off to the side of the group. She stretched out for a deep yawn as she allowed time to resume. The five tengu who had been charging her dashed forward at an empty spot now. A split second later, a chorus of yelps and howls rose into the air as the knives landed, digging into flesh or leaving cuts in their wake.

“Hah! Really girls, ya gotta be faster’n—”

“Pivot right!”

Getting stabbed with silver was the kind of thing that most youkai did not appreciate. She was used to a few well-thrown knives staggering foes for a few seconds at worst. The tengu, though, were too disciplined to let something like that slow them down. The group that had been rushing her turned in lockstep, advancing on her new position despite the fact that some of them had knives pierced into their flesh.

“Strike!” At the command, the foremost rank of tengu thrust their shields out.

It was a powerful-looking attack, but nothing that Rin couldn’t dodge with a step backward. “C’mon, really? That one’s kinda sad, don’t you—”

“Strike!” This time, their swords sliced toward her.

That one was scarier, and had a bit more reach. She whirled just out of range of them, fanning a fistful of daggers in her hand. Probably best to just get this over with. She waited for the right moment to pause time, catching them just off-balance…

And then something flew in from the corner of her vision.

Rin jolted backward, already mid-dodge before she froze time… a moment too late. When it stopped, it took her a moment to realize what had even happened. It hadn’t been any normal attack. One of them had thrown a net. A very specialized sort of net, with weights hanging from the edges. Pulled along by them, it had already started whipping in around her to encircle her body. More importantly, she’d reflexively thrown her hands up to shield herself, so it had managed to tangle up her arms, too. Frozen in time along with everything else, it was as unyielding as stone, and a bit too big for her to pull it loose without letting time resume for the whole rest of the world too.

With the net entangling her arms all the way up to the shoulder in places, her movements were pretty limited. Twisting around, she was just able to wriggle a few centimeters of her left arm free. Anything past that would require her to dislocate a shoulder or maybe break a hand. Seemed like she was stuck here.

She at least managed to twist around far enough to see her surroundings. Ah, there it was. That rear rank of tengu, the ones who’d been mysteriously hunkered down behind their shields, were to thank. One of them even still had her hand extended from throwing the net. Two more had been frozen mid-toss.

Rin shot a rude gesture over at them. Didn’t do much good, since they couldn’t see it, but it was the principle that counted. “So you guys knew I was comin’, huh? None of this makes sense ‘less ya specifically trained to fight me, really, does it?” She grit her teeth and gave a few more tugs against the net. “Bastards.”

She wasn’t going to make any progress like this. After a moment to make her plans, she allowed time to resume.

Rin sprang away from the shield charge, already clawing at the net. She’d almost gotten it, too, before another net descended. Right behind it was one of the charging tengu. She lashed out with her shield, smashing it into Rin’s stomach with enough force to knock the wind out of her.

Rin froze time again. This time, she was left in an awkward position, recoiling back from the attack with her upper body dangling from the nets. They were getting more tangled now, with the ropes digging into her skin in places. She might have been able to squeeze out by dislocating a shoulder before, but now, it might require something more like gnawing off an arm.

“Dammit.”

She sat there for a good ten minutes of subjective time. She didn’t think she was getting out of this, but she could at least let the aches subside. Besides, it felt suitably spiteful. Her opponents couldn’t sense it, but she was still going to make them wait for this.

With a sigh, she let time move again. The tengu who’d swatted her before tackled her to the ground and pinned her. The others were already rushing in to help.

Rin grit her teeth. “You girls be gentle with me. Alice is gonna take every bruise outta your hides.”


	18. Chapter 15

Alice pushed herself into a dive, and tried not to look back at the hordes of tengu chasing after her.

Projectiles and beams of light speared through the air, scattering in a rough cone around her and Hatate as shots went wide. Well, presumably Hatate was somewhere nearby. Kind of hard to keep track in all the chaos.

The ground rushed up at her. She steeled her nerves, forcing herself to wait until the last second before pulling out of the dive. At that speed, even easing up to skim across the mountainside was a harsh turn, with the momentum slamming her down into her broom until she’d leveled out. Behind her, she heard a disappointing lack of tengu plowing face-first into the ground. Too much to hope that they were less maneuverable than her, she supposed. Oh well. The maneuver hadn’t cost her anything, and being low to the ground had some advantages.

With one hand still on the broom, Alice slipped her other to her bandolier. Her fingers ran down over four caps, then plucked out the fifth potion. She glanced back. Three or four tengu were hot on her trail, weaving side to side occasionally as they dodged trees. Noticing her slow down, one of them skidded to a stop, pulling back a ringed staff for what was doubtlessly going to be some magical attack.

Alice preempted her. She tossed the vial with a quick flick of her wrist, then turned back to focus on her flight. It deprived her of the chance to see her handiwork, but she could still hear it. The small magical reagent within the vial sparked after a set amount of time, boiling its contents instantly. The vial burst, exploding out into a cloud of steam. The water itself had been thoroughly cleansed of impurity, bringing it as close to the pristine lifelessness of the Netherworld as it could get. With any luck, a youkai would find it about as pleasant as a brick to the face.

Two or three of her pursuers were caught inside the cloud. The rest, though, swept out to the sides to avoid it. She pulled herself into a climb just in time to feel an arrow zip past. The new angle gave her a better view of the sky above, where Hatate was locked in combat with the _other_ half of the tengu forces. The projectiles lit up the darkening sky, occasionally bathing the entire area in a particularly bright flash of light. From this distance, it was hard to tell which side was winning.

Now that she had a few seconds where she wasn’t engaging in constant combat, she was able to take better stock of herself. Her vision was blurred with exhaustion. Her fingers were quivering against the broom handle. Her pulse was hammering in her ears. Her reserves of magic felt tenuous enough that she feared she might drop right out of the air sooner or later. It hadn’t been _that_ long of a fight. Maybe Rin’s worries last night had held a bit more truth than she’d care to admit.

Best to finish this quickly either way. As she ascended, she spotted a lone tengu writhing through the air and swatting at her back. Alice pointed the broom toward her, while her other hand flicked another potion into the air. It erupted into a smokescreen behind her, hopefully buying her the few seconds she needed.

As she approached the tengu, she tugged back on the broom, screeching to a halt. “Shinmyoumaru! We need to go!”

“Yeah, okay! Coming!”

The tengu shot Alice a pitiable look, as the source of her torment thrashed its way out of her clothes. Shinmyoumaru’s face poked up above the youkai’s collar. She pulled herself up onto the woman’s shoulder, while fending off a swatting hand with a sharp jab from her needle. “Now get out of here!” she shouted up at the tengu, giving the side of her neck a firm kick. “I don’t want to see you again!” She punctuated the order with a slash, driving the tengu’s hand back again. Before it could make another go at attacking her, Shinmyoumaru leapt into the air, grabbing onto the shaft of the broom and pulling herself up to safety.

Relieved and free of her punishment, the tengu quickly started recovering. She darted backward, putting some room between her and Alice, and started patting herself down for weapons.

Alice blasted her with a quick burst from the mini-hakkero and took off before she even saw the result. This was, sadly, no time for elaborate attacks.

“So what’s happening?” Shinmyoumaru shouted up at her, having to raise her voice to be heard over the wind as they took off again. “Are we winning?”

“W-we…” Alice took a breath to steady her voice. It still sounded pretty shaky as she continued. “We might be?”

From below, movement caught the corner of Alice’s eye, as the tengu who had been pursuing her burst up through the smoke cloud. Alice ignored them for the moment. She hunkered down, making herself more aerodynamic as she coaxed more speed out of her flight. It only made her more aware of how her every limb was weak and shaking. The extra exertion was going to make its toll known sooner or later, but every meter she could put between her and her pursuit was another bit of breathing room.

Above, it seemed that Hatate had her own crowd of assailants on the defensive. Her hands were clasped solemnly around her gohei, head bowed, as an attack lit up the sky. Every single tengu was being chased by a cloud of ofuda, following them tirelessly, just fast enough that they could almost escape if they kept moving. Complicating this, though, was the fact that Hatate’s gohei was constantly erupting into scintillating light, slashing at them with four or five lasers at a time. It wasn’t anything complicated, but it stopped them from taking advantage of their superior numbers or falling back to regroup.

Something felt wrong here. Dozens of tengu had poured out of the village earlier, and this didn’t account for all of them. Quite a few had chased Rin off into the forest, but she hadn’t seen any signs of combat coming from that direction. Nor had Rin _or_ any of those tengu returned yet. Presumably, that meant that they were still fighting, but…

“Let’s end this!” Alice shouted over to Hatate, as she turned her broom around. “We need to get moving before they decide to send more reinforcements.”

The tengu below were quickly catching up to her, only a few seconds away. She didn’t have a lot of time. She jammed the mini-hakkero’s power to maximum, letting it burn so hot that it was uncomfortable to hold within a matter of seconds. She raised it, lining up a shot down the center of the group. And—

Somewhere below, a low drum rumbled through a staggered series of beats, loud enough that they were probably audible down in the human village.

The entire battle ground to a stop.

It was a signal of some sort, apparently. Every tengu stopped where they were and turned to retreat to the edge of the village. One below, who Alice recognized as the girl she’d splashed with purified water, shot her a look of annoyance before hurrying off. The ones who’d been trying to approach Hatate withdrew, weaving through a few defensive maneuvers until they were far enough away that the ofuda decided they were no longer a threat. A cloud of ofuda was left drifting to the ground as Hatate’s attack came to a confused end.

There was a moment of tentative silence. Alice became aware that she was gulping down wheezing breaths. The broom was wobbling in the air, and she did her best to steady it before it became too apparent.

“Um.” Hatate shot a wary glance at the retreating tengu before drifting closer. “… did we win? What’s going on?”

“I… I’m not sure. They could be trying to lure us in for an ambush. I really doubt they surrendered that easily, but…”

Motion on the ground drew Alice’s attention downward. The tengu who had retreated were landing now, regrouping with their comrades, but that wasn’t the main event. A larger squad was emerging from the forest. In the center of their formation was… Rin. Even at this distance, Alice could see that her hands were tied behind her back. Each arm was being held firmly by an escort, and the rearmost of them had a blade leveled at her head. They’d taken exceptional precautions. Rin was thoroughly secured.

She had just enough time to really take in the sight before a voice called up from the gathering spot below, half as loud as the drum. “We have captured the maid and the shrine maiden. You have two minutes to surrender.”

“ _The_ shrine maiden?!” Hatate huffed. “I’m a shrine maiden too, you know! I don’t see why Yukari counts extra just because she was here first.”

Alice was still dazed. “I… I really don’t think that’s our main concern right now.” Only at the end of the sentence did she manage to tear her eyes away from the scene below.

“I guess. So what’s our move now? No way they’d kill Yukari or something, right? I mean, maybe if we can—”

Hatate came to a stop mid-sentence, as Alice started descending to turn herself in.

* * *

The western end of the tengu village, where the bulk of the fighting had happened, was in chaos. Every tengu who had any sort of official position when it came to war—which was pretty much everybody except the hanataka and yamabushi—also had something to be doing. Everybody else, though, had stepped outside to gawk. It had been ages since anybody had been so bold as to attack the tengu village, after all.

Kanako stepped past one such group of rubberneckers, her mind racing. She had quite a few things to consider, and a very short time in which to do it. No sense in wasting it, then. A quick dash took her to the edge of the village in a matter of seconds, where the last straggling warriors were returning from the fight. Rin was led past by a squad of escorts, and Kanako tried to ignore her as she searched for the shortest person around. Spotting that familiar mop of blonde hair, she stepped up and slapped a hand onto her shoulder. “Suwako. We need to talk.”

“Eh?” Suwako glanced back, with her camera open as she scanned the area for newsworthy images. “What’s there to talk about? I’m not even part of this mess.”

“Yes, you are.” In the distance Kanako spotted Sanae walking in an orderly rank with other wolves. She met her eyes, getting her attention, and gestured for her to follow. “This way. Sanae will join us.”

Suwako grumbled, but didn’t resist. She tagged along as Kanako led the way back into the village, heading closer to the western square itself. In the center of the square, soldiers were lining up the four captives. The four captives big enough to be held in such a manner, at least. Shinmyoumaru was currently clasped between the hands of an increasingly annoyed-looking crow tengu. Kanako shot a quick glance over the proceedings, but kept going, leading the way into a narrow space between buildings.

She came to a stop right in the center of the alley. Sanae and Suwako filed in behind her.

“You’re about to say something really foolish,” Suwako said. “Aren’t you?”

“And just what makes you think that?”

“Eh, it’s just how you are. Your plan didn’t work out. You’ve always been a sore loser.”

“Who’s the one who won’t stop complaining that I’m beating her in sales, again?” It was an idle retort, the kind of exchange they’d had a thousand times. It gave Kanako a few seconds to solidify the plan she’d come up with, and then a bit longer to second-guess herself about fifty times. “… what I’m about to propose will sound drastic, but it’s the only way forward.”

“See?” Suwako looked to Sanae. “Something foolish. What’d I tell you?”

“I’m not even going to bother denying it. You’re probably right. … they brought the inchling with them. We have the mallet. Both halves are here. We should use it ourselves, before it’s too late.”

“Um,” Sanae said. “By ‘we’ you mean…”

“The three of us, yes.”

Suwako leaned against the wall, crossing her arms and cocking her head to the side in thought. “I’ve gotta admit, you’ve got a point.”

Sanae looked between the two of them. “Does she? I really don’t think the higher-ups would be happy about it!”

“They wouldn’t,” Kanako said. “But I don’t know that we have a choice. Yukari was _supposed_ to steal the mallet and stop them. It seems like I overestimated her. Making a move for it ourselves is riskier, but…”

“… but if I have to pick between a bunch of self-important pompous windbags, I’d rather trust Kanako with the thing over the great tengu.” Suwako looked to the sky. Casually, as if it were an offhand thought, she added, “You’re talking about a coup.”

“Is it technically a coup if nobody else remembers it happened in the new reality? I’m not interested in taking over Tenma’s job, anyway. I can get more done in three news articles than the bureaucracy accomplishes in a week.”

“Real modest of you. Can’t disagree, though.” Suwako’s tongue poked into the corner of her cheek, like she was rolling the idea around in her mouth. “What makes you so sure the inchling will go along with it? Everyone seems to be gambling an awful lot on the assumption that she’ll just do whatever the last person to grab the mallet wants.”

“She’s a few centimeters tall. I’m sure we can persuade her.”

Sanae only just now seemed to be catching up to the conversation. “Nothing mean though! She’ll understand if we explain everything, right?” She sighed and looked to the ground, hesitant. “I really don’t like disobeying the great tengu, but…”

“But they have it coming,” Suwako finished for her.

“Yeah! … so what now?”

“Now? I need to go see to the prisoners. Suwako, go get the mallet, as quietly as you can.”

“And, um… what about me?” Sanae asked.

“You? You’re coming to help me fight if anybody else realizes what we’re doing,” Kanako said, already heading toward the mouth of the alley again. “I did say this was a coup.”

* * *

Komachi let out a long, deep sigh, for about the fifth time this hour.

The fighting had sounded pretty vicious. She hadn’t been too close, but it seemed like every few seconds she was hearing explosions (those had to be Alice) or the clatter of a dozen knives plowing into something (and that would be Rin.) The fact that she hadn’t heard anything Yukari-ish was heartening, at least. Maybe she’d already gotten her butt kicked. That would improve today a bit.

Speaking of which, she was getting pretty close to the tengu village. Probably time to check her preparations one last time.

She slipped a pair of fingers into her pocket, poking around. First, most importantly, there was a key. It was a complex-looking kappa thing, so small and fiddly that she kept worrying she’d lose it. She’d found it folded up inside of the paper Yukari had given her, just as Yukari had presumably found it in Kanako’s newspaper. The paper itself was sitting next to it. She pulled it out and unfolded it, looking over the map one last time to memorize where she was going.

Not for the first time, she debated whether she wouldn’t rather just turn around and go home. Yukari kind of had it coming at this point. _Of course_ her solemn request for Komachi to take care of the shrine in her absence had just been a cover for delivering her instructions. _Of course_ Komachi was the one doing Yukari’s dirty work, like always. Yukari hadn’t even added anything of note to Kanako’s map before she slipped it to Komachi. The only text in her handwriting was off to the side: ‘ _15 mins after sunset._ ’ It was underlined twice.

So yeah, there was a definite appeal to the idea of just hanging back and letting this all play out. Alice, Hatate, Rin, and Shinmyoumaru didn’t deserve it, but that was Yukari’s fault. Leaving Yukari hanging, smugly assured that her cunning move was going to pay off, only for her to slowly realize that she was on the losing end… some real karmic justice there. As an indirect employee of the Ministry of Right and Wrong, maybe she could talk somebody into paying her for it.

But, unfortunately, the fate of Gensokyo did kind of hang in the balance. Yukari had known what she was doing when she entrusted this to Komachi. Which was really the most infuriating part of it all.

Komachi was so tired. Tomorrow, assuming there _was_ a tomorrow, maybe she’d ask Lady Eiki for a day off. Sure, she’d barely done any work around the manor lately, but she felt like she had one coming anyway. Saving existence itself was pretty draining work even when you weren’t getting jerked around by Yukari.

That’d come later, though. Komachi slipped the paper back into her pocket, breathing out a long, melodramatic sigh. Nobody was around to hear it, but it was the principle of the matter.

The streets were almost empty, with only the occasional messenger streaking past above on some important errand or another. If she’d relied on sight alone, she might have assumed that the village was deserted. Her ears, though, informed her that there was quite a bit of clamor happening on the far end. The fighting had stopped several minutes ago. Now, there were only distant conversations and shouted orders. That was _probably_ a bad sign.

She stubbornly refused to hurry up. The building came into view soon enough, anyway. There wasn’t much to it, apart from the fact that somebody clearly wanted to protect whatever was inside. The area around it showed the marks of an extended fight. Not just any fight—a fight with _Yukari_. Here and there, fistfuls of ofuda were plastered to walls or strewn across the ground. Arrows were peppered around in places. The entire mess seemed to lead off toward the heart of the village, closer to the gathering on the other end.

Huh. Maybe Yukari really had gotten her butt kicked. Good for her.

Subtle though it was, though, the building’s door had about three locks and a steel bar holding it shut. Komachi pulled the key from her pocket and slipped it into one of the locks. It opened with a sharp click. Next a couple more locks, and finally that steel bar. The thing felt like it weighed twenty kilograms, but she hefted it up and pushed it off to the side. After she undid a few final mechanisms, the door swung open with glacial inertia.

The inside of the building was lit only by a single dim lantern. Even after the low evening light, it took a few seconds for Komachi’s eyes to adjust. Not that there was much to see. In the foreground, a sturdy wooden box was sitting on a small table next to the lantern. A few bits and pieces on the table suggested that somebody had eaten a few meals there. A bit beyond it was a stool. Beyond that was…

“Damn. I was hoping you’d gotten yourself killed out there.”

… a jail cell.

It was a fairly comfortable-looking one, at least. The futon within was plush, there was a desk with a chair, an opening above let a bit of light in, and the occupant had been given a few books. This apparently wasn’t enough to make her happy. She was seated on the futon, leaning back against the bars with her knees clutched to her chest. She hadn’t looked back for a moment as Komachi entered.

“Hate to disappoint you, really. I’m already half dead, though, if it’s any consolation.”

 _That_ finally inspired her to look back. After eyeing Komachi for a second, a sharp-toothed smile rose to her face. “Oh, hey. You aren’t the guard. If I had to guess, I’d say you just _beat up_ the guard out there, right?”

“Nope. Odds are somebody did, though.” Komachi stepped closer, looking down at her thoughtfully. “… not like I figured an amanojaku would look. I always pictured, I don’t know. One of those messed-up really evil faces they give demons and stuff in old scrolls.”

“Yeah, well. I hate your face too, so we’re even.” Seija rose to standing. She kept her eyes on Komachi through the bars, like she was expecting her to attack at any second or something. “So what now? Are you here to free me, or what?”

“Where’s the mallet?”

Seija scoffed. “Should have known.” She inclined her head toward the box on the table. “Don’t bother trying to open it, though. The guard took the key with her, and as far as I know, it’s—”

Roukanken flashed through the air. The cut was as quiet as a moth landing on a flower petal. One moment, the box was intact. The next, it was collapsing, coming apart at four precise cuts along its joints. As the box’s panels clattered to the tabletop, Komachi reached into the remains and pulled out the Miracle Mallet.

“—fine, whatever. Doesn’t change anything. Are you letting me out of here, or not?”

“If I let you out, what are you going to do?”

Seija rolled her eyes. “Same thing I was doing before. Try getting out of this place before it collapses.”

“It’s not going to collapse, though.” Komachi gave the hammer a demonstrative waggle. “We have this, and somebody rescued your little friend a while back.”

The look of surprise on Seija’s face was unmistakable, and only faded after a second or two. It was replaced by a cocky, spiteful sort of smirk. “And you really think that’s going to fix it, huh?”

“Yeah, I do.” Komachi considered her options, but decided to free her. Leaving Seija as the captive of the tengu would be pointless cruelty. After undoing the lock, she pulled the door open and stepped back to give Seija room. “Guess you’re taking off, then? Anything I should tell Shin on your behalf?”

“Tell her I left without saying a thing. It’ll sting more that way.”

* * *

Yukari hung her head, staring at the ground deep in thought.

Several waves of activity had gone through the tengu around them. First, hurried side meetings, dozens of messengers being dispatched to notify leaders and far-flung patrols about what had just transpired. Then, a subtle chaos as all of the disparate groups came together, coordinating themselves and working out the chains of command. And now, finally, things seemed to be falling into order. Many of the warriors had been dismissed, leaving _only_ enough to defeat all of their prisoners two or three times over. They were starting to form up into orderly groups, muttering amongst themselves when their superiors weren’t looking.

They kept their voices low, but Yukari could catch the occasional snippet. Words like ‘execute’ and phrases like ‘orders from the top.’ Every now and then, one of them would shoot a pitying look toward their prisoners.

“This sucks,” Hatate said, breaking a long period of silence between the captives. “Like, just to be clear, we’re toast, right? Game over?”

“I’m not about to give up that easily.” Alice’s hands had been bound behind her back, and she was doing something subtle with her fingers to loosen the bindings. “And I’d encourage you to do the same.”

“Thinkin’ about it, though…” Rin mused. “… if we’re gonna die anyway, it’s gotta be pretty sick if it’s by tengu, right? Choppin’ off our heads or somethin’. Hey, y’know I heard that sometimes, the head stays conscious fer a bit, an’ it’ll even try to—”

“I really don’t think this is the time,” Alice said.

“That’s just, like, an old wives’ tale or something,” Hatate said. “They wouldn’t have blood pressure and stuff.”

“You just watch. I’m gonna do a soliloquy n’ everything. It’s gonna be real tragic.”

“I think I’d prefer it if you were less enthusiastic about being decapitated, _dear_ ,” Alice’s motions below became a big more urgent. She turned a suspicious gaze toward Yukari. “You’re being uncharacteristically quiet.”

“Hmm? What shall I say, Alice? Can’t a girl enjoy her final moments in quiet contemplation?”

“We both know that you accepting your defeat with dignity is the strangest part of this entire affair.”

Yukari took a breath to steady herself, and slowly hissed it out through her nose. “Let’s review the situation, shall we? I am bound and on my knees. Around me are roughly three dozen tengu warriors, some of the finest and most well-coordinated fighters in Gensokyo. They are fully aware that I’d like to escape, and unlikely to be caught off-guard. It would appear that they’re considering whether it would be expedient to kill me.” She gave a slight shrug. “There’s no benefit to struggling against hopeless odds. I’m resigned to accept whatever comes next with dignity.”

“Komachi would be proud if she were here, I guess.” Hatate paused, looking to Yukari. “… hey, where _is_ Komachi?”

“I asked her to stay behind and look after the shrine. I had to ensure that if we all die today, the goddesses will still be attended to.”

“… you’re kidding me.”

“I’m afraid that I’m quite serious, Hatate.” Yukari met her gaze, holding it for a few seconds. She only looked away again when Hatate seemed convinced.

“You _expected_ us to die so much that you left someone behind to take care of your stuff? I’ve got a shrine too, you know! The goddesses…!”

Hatate trailed off, her expression falling. The group went quiet again. Yukari went back to staring at the ground.

Her crafty reputation had been hard-won. She was up against youkai who were millennia old. Some had Gensokyo-spanning intelligence networks. Others could disguise themselves as simple animals and household items. When it came to plotting, a human had to be at the top of their game to even compete. She liked to think that her plan was the best shot that any of them would have have been able to come up with.

She also knew that real life was never as tidy as the mystery novels that Lady Ran loved so much. A plan was, on some level, a gamble. She’d gambled on the tengu overhearing their conversation at the cafe, and coming away with the mistaken impression that they knew what Yukari was up to. She’d gambled on the tengu taking the bait and treating her as the real threat, clearing the way for Komachi and making it less likely that any of the others would get injured in combat. She’d gambled on Komachi actually reading her note and understanding her part in it. She’d gambled on Komachi making it to the building with the mallet, not finding any surprises inside that Kanako hadn’t known about, and not bumping into any unexpected observers who might prematurely raise an alarm. Intelligence was the sharpest tool in the Hakurei shrine maiden’s arsenal. It was also at the mercy of blind entropy.

She’d read Akyuu’s article on her. On her youkai counterpart in the other Gensokyo, at least. A mastermind with superhuman intellect, who seemed to confidently execute plans against the entire moon, or sway the sentiments of thousands of youkai at once. Perhaps if she were thousands of years old, able to be anywhere at any time, in command of a super-intelligent minion, and superhumanly intelligent and powerful, she could attain that level of craftsmanship, too.

Yukari Yakumo might have been calm in this sort of situation.

Yukari Hakurei was merely glad that she had a good poker face.

A muted wave of activity ran through the tengu. They were rearranging themselves, moving into tidier ranks on either side of the hostages and straightening their postures. Things were about to get underway, it seemed.

And, just as an imperious-looking crow tengu stepped forward, a clamor rose elsewhere in the village.

One by one, the conversations quieted down, with every eye turning in that direction.

They weren’t waiting for long. Mere moments later, somebody darted into the square with bewildering speed. When the blur came to a stop, a crow tengu dipped a deep bow toward her loosely assembled superiors. “Forgive me for the interruption! But…” She lifted her head just enough to glance toward them and gauge their reaction. “The southwestern storeroom has been opened. Both the prisoner and the mallet are gone.”

A louder murmur ran through the crowd, as it once again dissolved into chaos.

Yukari forced herself to keep a straight face, looking as despondent as ever while cackling in her heart. Sure, she would have preferred for this to happen earlier, but it was still just what she’d staked her hopes on. With the mallet missing, the tengu had a security crisis on their hands. At the very least, searching for the thief would take immediate priority over watching the prisoners. If they were normal prisoners, this would merely be fortuitous. As it was…

Kanako stepped forward from somewhere in the crowd, raising a hand to draw attention. “Retrieving the mallet should take priority over this sideshow. Third and fifth squads, secure the storeroom. Everybody else should patrol the village for any sign of the thief. Release the prisoners; they’re just a diversion now. I’ll take care of the inchling girl myself.”

… right on cue. It had always been predictable for Kanako to intervene on their behalf as soon as she had a deniable excuse to do so.

Kanako extended an expectant hand to the tengu who was holding Shinmyoumaru. The woman made her way forward past the group of hostages. She passed close enough for Yukari to see Shinmyoumaru poking up from her hands, still squirming in outraged protest. “What are you doing?! Let me go!” She chomped down on a finger that already had a dozen red bite marks on it. It didn’t seem to get much of a reaction.

“Hold it!” One of the more important-looking tengu at the head of those many groups stepped forward. The tengu who had been milling about preparing to leave froze, looking back to her. “My orders were clear: all of the prisoners are to be kept here, and the inchling is to be taken directly to—”

(“Do any of you people ever remember my name?!” Shinmyoumaru squeaked, without acknowledgment.)

“Obviously these are exceptional circumstances,” Kanako said, reaching out for Shinmyoumaru. “We need to secure her and find that mallet. Anybody who’s here when they could be searching for it is wasted.”

“My plans didn’t say anything about—”

“Then ask yourself why the great tengu don’t trust you enough to tell you their contingency plans.”

Kanako hold the officer’s gaze until the latter backed down. While she was at it, she swept the same expression across the entire gathered group. Nobody rose to the challenge of questioning her further.

She looked rather pleased with herself at that. Her attention turned to somebody on the other side of the arrangement. “Now, release the prisoners so we can move on to more important things.”

“That… goes against my orders as well.” It seemed that this second tengu had more backbone. She straightened up, with one hand subtly drifting to the grip of her sword. “Show me some authorization.”

“These orders came too quickly for me to receive anything written. If you’d like to ask the great tengu themselves, I’m sure they’d be happy to chew you out for wasting their time.”

A wave of murmurs ran through the group. Postures shifted, people glancing to each other as they gauged the general opinion on this situation. An uneasy tension hung in the air, with muttered, urgent conversations spreading throughout the crowd.

“ _I knew it!_ ” Alice hissed with annoyance, while their guards were distracted. “What did you do with the mallet? If you planned all of this, then just how did you expect to get out of here?”

Yukari tuned her out, feeling her stomach collapse into queasy unease. Everything had ridden on the mallet’s theft distracting enough guards to free them outright, or Kanako being able to make it happen. If Kanako was being overruled…

Well, if Yukari trusted anybody to do the right thing with the mallet, it was Komachi. Certainly she’d force some bargain from the tengu. Gensokyo would be saved, both from the threat of existential collapse and eternal tyranny by haughty tengu. If Yukari ended up dead or imprisoned as a side effect… well. She was a Hakurei shrine maiden, after all. She’d always known, in the back of her head, that she might give her life for Gensokyo some day. She just hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

The argument among the tengu was reaching a peak. One of Kanako’s now-many opponents raised her voice. “And how are we supposed to know you aren’t responsible for the mallet’s disappearance in the first place?! Everything about this situation is suspicious.”

Kanako stood her ground, sounding more commanding with each word. “If I had, would I be bothering with the fate of a few humans? Now stand aside.”

“No.” The tengu that she’d been arguing with let out a tense sigh. “No. I’m not going against direct orders. This is your last chance. Shameimaru, Inubashiri, get on the ground with the prisoners.”

“If you want to pretend that I’m a criminal, then at least stand by your convictions. Come at me. Show me that you mean it.”

Weapons were being drawn now, as the tengu started realizing that this was drifting toward an inevitable conflict. Sanae stepped to the side, inserting herself between Kanako and any potential attackers. Near the edges of the group, a few were slipping off to have no part of this fiasco. Far more, though, looked prepared to cut down Kanako’s subtle mutiny the old-fashioned way if need be.

“Yukari!” Alice repeated, more insistent this time. “If this is part of your grand plan, then please _do something._ ”

Yukari was silent. The tengu were backing away from each other, both sides warily preparing to launch into violence at any moment. She didn’t feel hopeful that Kanako and Sanae would win against all of their peers.

Before they moved, though, the air was split by a roar from deep within the mountain.

It was a thunderous, bone-shaking sound, like an avalanche. The trees shook. The buildings clattered. Tengu shouted in surprise, and soon struggled to keep their footing. The ground itself started shuddering.

If it was an earthquake, it was the strongest one that Gensokyo had felt in ages. The earth bucked beneath them, launching Yukari a few centimeters into the air, only to come to a heavy landing just in time to do it again. The sound was deafening now, and added to it were screams of panic, buildings starting to groan from the strain, and collapsing trees. Yukari toppled over onto her side, no longer able to stay upright on the trembling earth. She sprawled out, squirming against her restraints as she was pummeled from below by the ground itself.

And suddenly, her limbs were free. The restraints fell away, sliced cleanly through. As she pushed herself up from the ground, she noticed everybody else doing the same. Rin hovered overhead, with a shocked-looking Shinmyoumaru clasped in her hands. “C’mon, let’s get movin’!” She hollered, over the roar of the earthquake. “Ain’t gonna get a better shot!”

For once, Yukari agreed with her. She thrust herself to standing as quickly as she could, taking off before the disaster could knock her over again. She heard only a few shouts from below as a stubborn officer tried to spur her scattered soldiers into pursuit. It didn’t seem to come. The sounds from below grew quieter as she ascended, putting some distance between herself and the mountainside. She pushed forward as fast as she could go, not even daring to slow down for long enough to check if she was being followed.

Only a few minutes later, when she was kilometers from the tengu village, did she dare to pause. She was over the foothills at the base of the mountain now. If nobody had attacked her by now, they weren’t going to. At least, not immediately.

The sound had tapered off too, she realized. Turning around, though, the source of it became obvious. She was still too close to get a good feel for its scale. But, it was roughly spherical. A cloud of blue energy, drifting in wisps and occasionally flickering. It covered an entire side of Youkai Mountain, bulging out from it like a tumor. Within, the mountain itself had become uncertain. The trees jolted now and then, changing to different seasons or being displaced as signs of civilization popped in and out of existence between them.

The anomaly that had eaten the castle had grown, it seemed. And now, it had devoured a large, visible chunk of Gensokyo.


	19. Chapter 16

In the distance, Youkai Mountain roiled.

The blue haze that had poured out of it was visible across Gensokyo. The Hakurei shrine was one of the farthest points away from the mountain, and even here, it poked above the horizon. Closer up, it probably lit up the night. From a distance, it didn’t look quite so dramatic. Like a cloud, backlit by the moon.

It _should_ have been pretty, putting it like that. Somehow, Alice couldn’t bring herself to admire the giant glowing energy sphere that heralded the apocalypse. It dragged half-remembered, uneasy sorts of memories up from the depths of her mind. She still didn’t remember much of her time in the castle. Nor did she want to.

The sound of Komachi pouring another drink pulled her away from those thoughts. She glanced over and lifted her own dish. “I wouldn’t mind a refill, myself.”

Komachi shot her a questioning glance, but didn’t argue. She tipped the bottle to fill the dish, then pushed the cork back in. “Never knew you to be much of a drinker.”

“I’m not.” Alice took a long pull from the dish. “Days where I nearly get executed are an exception.”

“Hey, hey!” Rin shook her own dish reproachfully in Alice’s general direction. “Wasn’t nothin’ ‘nearly’ about it! I had things all under control! I’d already busted out of my ropes n’ stuff a good while before all that. I was just waiting for a good chance to snatch up Shin an’ all.”

Komachi leaned over to top up Rin’s dish while she was at it. “How’d you even get out of them, anyway?”

“Those tengu didn’t even find half the knives in my dress. Ain’t many ropes you can’t bust out of with a fistful of knives and some patience, ‘specially when your guards are all distracted arguing. It’s like… a _je ne sais quoi_ , yannow?”

“That isn’t at all what that means,” Alice said.

“Oh, wait, yeah, that’s the other one.” Rin took another sip of sake. “ _Vouloir, c’est pouvoir_! That’s the one.”

“That one, I can’t claim to know, so I’ll take your word for it.”

“It means ‘stubborn folks always win’ or something.”

“Mmh.”

With that, the conversation came to an end, and everyone’s gaze turned back toward the mountain.

Any other night, this would feel companionable. Like a social event. Tonight, it felt more like the conversation was just an attempt to distract them from… everything, really. The half-engulfed mountain. The near-death experiences. The fact that most of them wanted to throttle Yukari, but were too nice or utilitarian to do so. Nobody had _coordinated_ them all returning to the Hakurei shrine. They’d just done so, as if acting on some instinct.

And speaking of Yukari…

She’d been content to move off to her own corner, inspecting the mallet with Shinmyoumaru and negotiating the terms of their adjustments to reality. Or whatever. Now, though, their conversation seemed to be coming to a close. She scooted closer, rocking a dish in her hand like she was toying with it. “Komachi, when you have the time, I’d like a dish of _my_ sake, if you please.”

“Not sure what you mean.” Just to underscore that, Komachi popped the cork out and took a swig directly from the mouth, followed by a satisfied gasp. “This sake belongs to the three of us and Hatate.”

“Is that so?”

“Mmhm.”

“Asshole tax.” She paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Ew, no, wait. ‘Payment for being an asshole,’ actually.”

Yukari smiled. Alice, if she had to bet, would guess that she was enjoying this on some level. Yukari never took this sort of thing personally, not really. If anything, she seemed to revel in it. Annoying people was, in the end, a way of exerting control over them. And, really, most youkai could stand to be annoyed more often.

Even now, so soon after they’d all nearly met _multiple_ horrible fates, Yukari could seem so calm. It was one of the many things about her that rubbed Alice the wrong way. Perhaps she occasionally went too far in pursuing one of her projects, but at least she could admit when she was wrong.

Admitting when she’d been beaten, though…

Her first instinct after losing a fight was to fall back, rethink her tactics, and engage with the foe once more, now slightly more knowledgeable about their abilities. In a way, she and Yukari had been engaging in a decade-long series of battles, intellectual and occasionally literal, ever since they’d met. Yukari was Gensokyo’s de facto problem solver. Alice felt the need to master any challenge that she faced, including proving herself when it came to resolving incidents. It was only natural that the two would butt heads.

She couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that between their encounter in the cave and Yukari being the one who ultimately engineered the theft of the mallet, Yukari had won. This didn’t feel like the sort of challenge that offered do-overs, either.

Yukari had bested her. Despite hours of planning, she’d led two of her friends—and Shinmyoumaru, whatever she counted as—into a fight that had nearly gotten them killed. All she had to show for it were a few bruises and an exhaustion that the alcohol was already threatening to compound. Wonderful.

Yukari scooted closer, snapping Alice out of her introspection. She plucked up one of the bottles of sake, with a confidence that seemed to be taunting Komachi. “Well,” she said, as she began filling a dish. “Since Hatate isn’t here, I’ll graciously accept her portion in her absence.”

Komachi’s gaze turned back toward the mountain. “… hope she’s okay.”

“It looks like the anomaly missed all of the more populated areas. I’m sure the goddesses were shaken up, but otherwise fine.”

“I guess so. Hopefully the tengu leave her alone too.”

“Once they recover, they’ll probably be far more interested in coming for the rest of us.”

“Great.”

A few lanterns were visible down the hillside now, fading in and out of visibility as they passed behind trees, torii, and underbrush. They were moving unhurriedly, weaving up the crooked path to the shrine. Only once they were approaching the courtyard did the procession itself start to become visible. In the front were two servants, each armed with a sword and carrying a lantern. Mokou was standing in between them and another pair of servants, and behind even those was Akyuu. She inclined her head in greeting as the group approached.

Mokou herself looked a bit less personable. As she drew to a stop in front of the shrine, she rubbed sorely at a few joints, grumbling to herself. “So,” she said, kneading an ache out of her elbow. “Normally I’d ask what’s so important that it’s worth dragging me up here in the middle of the night, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the exploding mountain.”

“Only indirectly.” Yukari raised the Miracle Mallet and gave it a playful swing. “I just thought that you two should be present for the proceedings. Shall we go inside and get started on saving Gensokyo, before any more major landmarks dissolve?”

* * *

The group sat around the table in the shrine’s front room: three humans, a half-phantom, an immortal, and a were-hakutaku. Atop the table between them stood Shinmyoumaru, leaning against the Miracle Mallet at the center of the proceedings.

Akyuu was thankful that the table _was_ there, because with the occasional looks that Alice and Rin were shooting Yukari, she suspected it was the only thing preventing a fight from breaking out. It felt like it had been a long night, and they’d barely been at this for twenty minutes. She needed to put a stop to this, or they’d be here until sunrise. Fortunately for Akyuu, in this timeline at least, she was experienced at breaking up squabbling children.

“It doesn’t matter _who_ is responsible for getting the mallet back in the end,” she said, gesturing to the two warring sides. “Shouldn’t we be more focused on actually using it?”

“Yeah,” Rin said, “but Yukari nearly—”

Alice rested a steadying hand on one of Rin’s, coaxing her to quiet down. Akyuu shot her a grateful look before continuing. “Miss Sukuna, are you able to tell whether the mallet is charged?”

“Yep!” Shinmyoumaru patted at the handle. “It needs to rest between wishes, so you have to be able to tell when it’s ready to go again.”

“Are you able to tell whether it has enough power to fix this, then? All of this is pointless if it can’t, after all.”

“Hmm…” Shinmyoumaru straightened up and turned around, looking thoughtfully down at the mallet. “I think so? Hold on.”

Crouching down, she wrapped her arms around the mallet’s handle. The thing was the size of a small tree trunk compared to her. After hefting it up onto a shoulder, she braced herself, then put her entire body into swinging it. The mallet moved ponderously, only starting to build up speed past the apex of its arc. It smacked into the table at full force, rattling the cups and nearly knocking Shinmyoumaru off her feet.

Shinmyoumaru paused, frowning. “Hmm…”

“Is that a good ‘hmm’ or a bad ‘hmm’?” Yukari asked.

Shinmyoumaru ignored her. Turning around, she grabbed the mallet and repeated the ritual in the other direction. When the mallet smacked down this time, she paused, looking openly concerned.

“Miss Sukuna,” Akyuu said. “Would you like to share your findings?”

“Hold on! I’m thinking!”

Again, Shinmyoumaru hefted the mallet. This time, she let it linger overhead. She gave it a few partial swings in the air, like she was trying to get a feel for its weight. She jostled it up and down. Muttering something to herself, she spread her stance wider, then slammed the mallet into the table.

This time, she let it stay there. Straightening up, she gave a broad shrug and a sigh. “Can’t do it.”

A few seconds passed in silence. Finally, Rin interrupted it. “What th’ heck’s that supposed to mean?!”

“The mallet still doesn’t have enough energy for this stuff.”

“And by ‘this stuff,’” Yukari said, “you mean…?”

“I mean any of it!” Shinmyoumaru crossed her arms, shaking her head and looking exasperated. “When I used it to make my big wish in the first place, it had been in that castle for centuries! It had a long time to charge up. It’s barely even been three weeks this time! It’s not even at half power…”

“And how long would it take to get enough power to actually fix this situation?” Alice asked. 

With another sigh, Shin turned back to the mallet. This time, she partially raised it a few times, letting it rise just a millimeter or two off the table before tapping back down. “Hmm…” A few more taps. “I guess about a month? Maybe a bit more.”

“Seems kinda long,” Rin said.

“Then complain to the oni or whatever who made the mallet! There isn’t anything I can do about it.”

“Surely we can speed up the process somehow,” Yukari said.

“Um… I don't think so? If there is, there wasn't anything like that in the castle, and there were lots of old stories about it and stuff.”

“It was crafted by oni, wasn’t it? I can provide several oni.”

“It’s not likely that they can do anything,” Alice said, staring off into the distance thoughtfully. “There aren’t many methods to charge arcane devices in the first place, let alone ones this powerful. And that would still require somebody who feels confident working on a poorly understood artifact from centuries ago…”

“We need to fix this _tonight_. We’re probably lucky that the tengu aren’t already coordinating a siege outside. But if it needs time, that does raise another question…” Yukari looked to Akyuu. “How long do we have left?”

“I’ll take a look. I hope you understand that this isn’t an exact science, though. I'm trying to guess how quickly reality is collapsing based on the damage to known history. But...” Sighing out a breath, Akyuu raised her hands and let her eyes drift shut. Brushing her hands side to side in the air, she immersed her senses in Gensokyo’s history.

She ran her fingers along threads of narrative, tracing the stories that composed the shared consensus of reality. In a way, they were tidier now than they had been on the night of the full moon. All of the smaller knots had resolved themselves one way or another—she didn’t want to think about what that might mean too much. But, there was a ravenous tangle in the middle of the orderly patterns. Almost every thread she traced ran into the anomaly that was consuming Youkai Mountain sooner or later. At the heart of it, the threads roiled, with new ones appearing from elsewhere and others being strained nearly to the breaking point by some unseen force. She tried to get some feel for what it was expressing, but it was impossible. It was like trying to read a book where the sentences were all wriggling across the page, lines from other books were mixed in, and the book itself was trying to squirm out of her hands.

She picked out a few relatively undamaged spots and plucked them, getting a feel for just how much strain they were under and how quickly they were being pulled toward the anomaly. Once she had her answer, she opened her eyes, feeling far more tired than when she’d started. “These things are hard to explain, so I’ll try a simile. Do you know how, if you’re tearing a piece of cloth, making the first small rip is the difficult part? Once you’ve gotten the rip started, it’s much easier to continue it.”

“I already don't like where this is going,” Komachi said.

“The rip is the anomaly on Youkai Mountain and Gensokyo is the cloth, I assume,” Yukari said.

“Yes,” Akyuu said, feeling slightly annoyed at Yukari for stealing her thunder. “… now that the central disruption has grown beyond its original size, I think its influence is spreading. As for how quickly… hmm. Let's say nine days to get to the village. Twelve, perhaps, before all of Gensokyo is engulfed.”

“No! We've got to do something. Being in that stuff, it's…” Shinmyoumaru trailed off, a distant look on her face as she wrestled with words.

Alice finished the sentence for her: “It's terrible. It isn’t a condition that anybody should ever have to endure.”

“I haven't seen as much as these two...” Komachi finished off her dish before continuing. “… but yeah. If it comes to that, evacuating actually sounds pretty good by comparison. So. Uh. Sounds like the mallet isn’t really an option. Do we know anybody who’s handy with patching up realities?”

It sounded like an attempt at a joke, but nobody seemed very amused.

“Well,” Mokou said, leaning back with a grunt. “That figures.”

The silence returned, for longer this time.

“There are… place that we still haven’t checked,” Alice said. “Makai, maybe. The lunar capital. I wouldn’t trust any of them even if they offered their help freely, but…”

“And the entire time that we grasped at those straws, Gensokyo would still be fraying, and the tengu would still be trying to recover the mallet,” Yukari said. “You spoke to Patchouli yourself, did you not? Did she happen to mention anything about secret Lunarian reality-rewriting techniques?”

“I think that you know the answer.”

Yukari dipped her head in the slightest proud nod.

“So that’s it?” Komachi said. “We went through all that trouble for a dud mallet that can’t do anything for us?”

“It can still do stuff!” Shinmyoumaru shouted up at her. “Just not that!”

“Like what?”

“Um.” Shinmyoumaru shot a glance back toward the mallet. “Actually! Hold on.”

Shinmyoumaru hefted the mallet again. She put it through a few more swings, muttering to herself and occasionally going through one of her little rituals—waggling it in the air, turning it over to rest on the other side, once even spinning it around herself like a discus thrower before arcing it up for the swing. After the last one, she dropped the handle and tilted her head back, staring off into space. Finally, she announced, “There’s… one thing I think would work, but you’re not going to like it...”

“I think we probably all like letting Gensokyo collapse even less,” Mokou said. “What is it?”

“If we change Gensokyo back to how it was in the first place. That’s way easier.”

“Hey, hold on a sec!” Rin leaned in over her, propping herself up on one hand. “Why’s it easier to change all of Gensokyo back than to fix it up?! That don’t seem right!”

“That’s how it works!” When it became clear that Rin wasn’t going to accept this argument, Shinmyoumaru let out an exasperated sigh. “Think about it like, um… Tug of War! Giants play that sometimes too, right?”

“We know Tug of War, yes,” Akyuu said.

“So… there’s the original reality, and there’s the reality that me and Seija tried to make. And they’re both trying to pull Gensokyo in different ways. So it’s like they’re playing Tug of War, and Gensokyo’s the thread.”

Komachi paused mid-sip. “Thread?”

“Like when you play Tug of War!”

“A thread instead of a rope, ‘cuz you’re tiny?” Rin said. “… that’s adorable.”

Shinmyoumaru shot her a reproachful look before continuing. “Anyway. The two realities are playing Tug of War with Gensokyo. But the old one had a head start, right? And the reality that the Miracle Mallet created isn’t as strong, so it’s losing. So it’s a lot easier to make the old one win than the new one. But, um, also they’re pulling on it so hard that the thread, or rope or _whatever_ is starting to rip apart, and that’s that blue thing.”

“Doesn’t that make it sound like the rope is going to snap before either side wins?” Mokou said.

“Well… not really? If we just get rid of the weaker side, then Gensokyo’s not getting pulled both ways anymore. So I think it would be okay.”

“Without the stress that creates it, the anomaly would presumably dwindle away to nothing over time, judging by what I saw elsewhere,” Akyuu said. “And... things would just revert to how they were?”

“Mmhm! Well, not as soon as I did it. It’s like… the, um, winning guy would still need time to drag the thread past the… marker that shows you win? How do you know who wins Tug of War, anyway?”

“I think that the metaphor has outlived its usefulness,” Yukari said.

“Whatever! The point is, even if I get rid of the other universe, it will take a while for that first one to put things back how it wants them.”

“And how long would it take? Just what would this look like?”

Shinmyoumaru looked to Akyuu.

Akyuu lowered her head to consider the question. It wasn’t easy. She could swear that the preternatural intellect that came with being the Child of Miare felt a bit less incisive like this, but it was hard to tell if that was because something had changed about her on a spiritual level, or because Akyuu Kamishirasawa actually had a day job and couldn’t dedicate her life to reading and writing. She tried to take all of the factors that she knew into account, weighing them against what she’d seen with the smaller anomalies…

“Seven days, perhaps, before it reaches a tipping point. After that, I’d expect things to start changing quickly.”

“Oh!” Shinmyoumaru lifted the hammer’s handle, preparing to raise it again. “So it’s like when I’m swinging the hammer, and it’s really hard to get it to the top, but then—”

Yukari cut her off. “I’m going to issue you some kind of fine if you make another simile tonight. And it sounds to me like it’s decided. We need to fix this tonight. We… only really have the two options. Either we do this, or we do not. I don’t like it, but the way forward seems obvious.”

“Hey, whoa!” Rin leaned forward, slamming her hands down on the table. “Who died n’ made you boss?!”

“ _I_ made myself the boss. It’s very responsible of me, I know.”

“We ain’t throwing everything away just because it’s easier!” Rin said. “There’s gotta be somethin’!”

“And what would you suggest, Rin? Shall we wait for the tengu to come steal the mallet back from us, only to search for some small hope as reality collapses? We only got this far by a miracle, and every minute that elapses, we risk losing our chance. We do this now, or not at all.”

“She’s right,” Alice said. Her voice was quiet. She was staring at the floor. “Yukari and I spent weeks searching for a solution. Everybody in Gensokyo knows what’s happening now, and not a single one has stepped forward thinking that they can fix this. If the mallet is our only way, then…”

Alice trailed off, reaching over to take Rin’s hand. Rin gave a soft grumble, but didn’t complain.

Akyuu softly cleared her throat, breaking the heavy silence that followed. “I don’t like it myself, but… I agree. But this is an important decision. It impacts everybody in Gensokyo. If we’re going to do this, we need to be unanimous. So: does anybody dissent?”

A silence hung over the room. A few people muttered their reluctant agreement. Rin mumbled something under her breath, only to be quieted down by a squeeze from Alice.

“It seems that we’ve reached a decision, then,” Yukari said. “Shinmyoumaru, do you need any preparation for this sort of thing?”

“Hmm, not really. Just put things back how they were before, right?”

“As much as I’d like to suggest a few changes, I think that reality has been tinkered with enough for one lifetime.” Yukari took a breath and slowly sighed it out, like she was taking one last opportunity to reconsider before she said, “Do it before any of us change our minds and do something foolish.”

“Um. If you’re sure…”

Shinmyoumaru rose to her feet and lifted the handle of the mallet one last time. After putting it over her shoulder, she pulled down the end just enough to get a feel for its weight. She closed her eyes, spending a few seconds in silent thought, and spread her legs for a more steady stance.

When she swung the mallet, it was nothing like the clumsy motions she’d made before. This time it flew up in a perfect, smooth arc, without ever seeming to accelerate. Akyuu felt like it was _tugging_ on her, like it was trying to drag everything along after it, like it was snagged on the fabric of the world and yanking it along. When the mallet smacked against the tabletop, there was a thunderous wooden clap. That tugging sensation she’d felt earlier came to an end, replaced by a strange sense that the whole world was shaking around her, like the sound from the mallet’s impact was reverberating through the universe itself.

The shock waves passed after five or six seconds. Even then, nobody dared to speak until Shinmyoumaru had released the handle. “There,” she said. “I think that should do it? I’m not sure if there’s going to be a cost or anything, but…”

“If there is, then we’ll just have to pay it,” Komachi said, leaning back against the wall. “So. Seven days, huh?”

“Yeah, about that.” Mokou pushed herself up from her seat, with a crackle of joints that belied her youthful appearance. She shuffled around the table, then came to a stop at the edge of the group, looking down at the rest of them. “The last time news about this stuff got out, the village was a mess for most of a day. How about we try to stop that from happening this time?”

“There’s no way to keep things entirely calm,” Akyuu said. “People will be naturally upset about this kind of thing.”

“Everybody already knows what’s going on, anyway,” Komachi added. “They shouldn’t get too riled up by this. Gensokyo was falling apart before. This is… still better.”

“And they deserve to know what’s going to happen,” Alice said. “I… suppose if we informed the tengu…?”

“Not, uh, exactly sure they’ll be happy to see us.”

“I don’t know that we have a choice. It doesn’t seem like they’ll rest until they know that we’ve used the mallet, and they’re the best way to disseminate information across Gensokyo. As long as we approach openly and peacefully, I don’t think they have anything to gain from attacking us.” Alice pushed herself to her feet, with only the slightest tremble visible in her motions. “I know how to find their observation posts, anyway. I should be able to get a message to them without going too deep into tengu territory.”

“Wait, I’m comin’ too.” Rin rose to standing. “We ain’t snuggled on your broom in ages. Gotta… gotta do that kinda thing while there’s time, right?”

“So, uh. What about the rest of us? It can’t be just as simple as—” Komachi mimed swinging a mallet. “—and then taking a nap until it’s all over, can it?”

“Hmm, well…” Yukari leaned over, snagging one of the bottles of sake and filling her dish. She took a long pull, draining it entirely, before letting out a gasp. “The goddesses are always accepting new followers. This strikes me as a very good time to start praying.”

* * *

Alice and Rin left to take their message to the tengu.

Mokou and Akyuu lingered a bit longer, but Mokou’s servants could only be kept waiting outside for so long. Soon they, too, departed.

It wasn’t much longer until Shinmyoumaru sprawled out in a sake dish and dozed off. Komachi was left alone with the increasingly drunken Hakurei shrine maiden.

“Komachi, my dear,” Yukari said, for what had to be the fifteenth time tonight. It seemed to be one of those cases where somebody’s intoxicated mind just latched onto a phrase and wouldn’t let it go. She picked up her dish, rocked it around in what she probably thought was a very sophisticated-looking manner at the moment, tilted it back, and then, finding it empty, patted around for the bottle to refill it.

“K’machi, my dear,” she repeated. After splashing some sake into the dish, she gave it a little thrust toward Komachi. Now, apparently, she was ready to proceed with whatever she’d wanted to say. “You don’t need to worry about me. I just wanted t’… t’have a drink.”

“Think it’s been a few more than one, actually.”

“You know what I mean.” Yukari tilted the dish back and drained the contents, finishing with a satisfied sigh. “’m fine. ‘m fiiine. Go do your… your _ghost things_ and leave me in a peace, please.”

“Yeah, I don't know if I'm buying that. It really isn’t like you to get this carried away with the booze. … actually, y’know what? We need to get some water in you.”

“The only bev’rage I need… is, mmh, is sake.”

“You’ll thank me in the morning.”

Komachi headed into the kitchen. Even at her lowest points, Yukari always made sure that the shrine's exterior looked presentable and competently-managed to would-be worshipers. Inside, though, told a different story. Like most of the shrine's interior, the kitchen was in an eternal unsteady balance between simple elegance and the clutter produced by her lack of motivation. A few used teacups were scattered around, waiting to be cleaned. The pots she'd gotten for storing fish were empty as usual—Komachi was pretty sure that Yukari found the time and energy to go fishing about twice a year. There was an old pot of rice sitting on the counter, having long since evaporated whatever moisture it had held.

But: The dishes were some of the nicer stuff that Komachi had seen in Gensokyo. Yukari needed to impress the occasional visiting representative from the village, after all. The cups too, apart from the fact that most of them were stained with tea at this point. As messy as the place was, Komachi had no doubt that Yukari could get it looking spotless in an hour or two if she knew she had important visitors coming. The illusion of having your life together could be almost as powerful as actually pulling it off. Almost.

She tracked down one of the few clean cups left in the cupboard and filled it with water. Back in the living room, she crouched down to sit it on the table in front of Yukari, then shot her a goading glance as she took a seat.

Yukari took the cup, tilting it back and dutifully downing the contents. Afterward, she kept the cup in her hand, rolling it around and inspecting it.

“Th' Hakurei shrine maiden… is not allowed to be a messy… messy drunk,” Yukari said, in a philosophical tone.

“I've got some bad news for you, then.”

“If an incident happened righ' now, who'd solve it? Mmh, couldn't be me. I'd fly straight into th' bullets. Gensokyo'd be ruined… and all because one silly girl just had, hadta have a few too many drinks.”

“Nobody's going to cause an incident tonight. Think everyone has the sense to lay low after hearing you guys fight the tengu for half an hour and Youkai Mountain getting eaten by a big blue cloud.” Still, Komachi reached over to subtly move the remaining sake bottle out of Yukari's reach.

“S'not the point. The point is. Point _is_ … mmh. D'you know how the Hakurei shrine maiden is chosen, Komachi, my dear?”

“Nope. You had the job before we met, remember?”

“Mmgh.” Yukari briefly looked like she might throw up. When she continued, though, she'd managed to steady her voice a bit, sounding slightly more sober. “She must be a girl without close relatives. One who's not owed a 'heritance, and one who isn't betrothed. Th' kind of girl nobody'll miss if she dies on her first youkai hunt. And ideally… ideally, a girl who won't have much else in her life competing with the job. Because th' job _is_ her life now… you see?”

“Sounds like a pretty bad deal when you put it like that, but don't think I've ever heard you complain. What, having second thoughts now?”

“Mmh, no. Th' point, Komachi, my dear—”

“You don't have to call me 'my dear' each time, y'know? Makes it sound like you're an old lady about to ask me for a favor.”

“Don't you know? 'ccording to Akyuu, I _am_ an old lady. Thoushands a' years old.” Yukari gave an unsteady chuckle at that, and leaned back, propping herself up with one hand. “But the point… point is… I have nothing else to do but protect Gensokyo. S'my family, you could say. All of Gensokyo. And aaaall the time I've been the shrine maiden, fifteen years, s'been my one job to protect it. This Gensokyo. And now~,” she said, in an unsteady sing-song voice, “it’s going~ to be~ replaced~.”

Komachi suppressed a wince. Here she'd thought that Yukari was perhaps taking this well, now that the problem had been addressed. She should have known better.

“None of us are blaming you, okay? We all agreed back there. This is what we've gotta do. If any of us could've done better, we would, right?”

“Doesn't matter, Komachi, my—” Apparently remembering Komachi's earlier words, Yukari stopped herself, looking vaguely irritated. She took the opportunity to raise her dish again, tilting it back to capture a few drops that were still clinging to the bottom. “… I'm the one whose jobbit is. And I failed. Failed specta… spectatacularly. Have you ever really… really looked at Gensokyo? Th’ way all the pieces fit together. The, the… _harmony_ of it all. It’s not just a place. S’not… _just_ a place. I… I love it, you know. More than anything.”

Yukari trailed off, looking somewhere between confused, despondent, and self-conscious at how much of her heart she'd just bared to Komachi. Before she could move on, Komachi took the opportunity to scoot over to her, slipping an arm behind her back and coaxing her up from the floor. “Come on, let's get you to bed. You're just gonna feel worse about all of this if you sit here drinking all night.”

“Maybe I _want_ to feel worse.”

“Too bad. Besides, if you want to call us family, you need to accept that we're going to stick our noses into your business.”

That drew a strangled chuckle from Yukari, but she said nothing.

The walk to Yukari's futon was only a few meters, but it still took a while, as Yukari occasionally wobbled or made a halfhearted attempt to turn around and go get another drink. Soon enough, though, they had arrived. Komachi braced herself and carefully lowered Yukari to the futon, then helped her wrap herself up in it.

Komachi rose to her feet, but she couldn't just leave now that it had been taken care of. Not yet, at least.

“Yukari… I mean it, though. The odds were against us even getting the hammer in the first place. We did better than anyone could have expected. Nobody's gonna blame you for that.”

“Still not enough to save Gensokyo.”

“We did save Gensokyo, though. Just not this specific version. In a week or so, you're going to be some crazy-powerful gap youkai and I'm gonna be a shinigami, and Gensokyo will keep right on going.”

“ _A_ Gensokyo, at least.” Yukari made a low sleepy sound, pressing in against her pillow. “I'll be fine, K'machi. And if I'm not, perhaps I deserve it.”

Komachi opened her mouth to respond, but arguing with her in this state felt pointless. Better to let her get some rest. Who knew, maybe she'd be more upbeat when she wasn't drunk and half exhausted.

Komachi didn't feel optimistic on that front, though.

“… good night, Yukari. Come, uh, come visit tomorrow if you start feeling worse about it, okay? We can talk more if you need.”

Yukari mumbled something in response. After waiting a few seconds to see if she was going to follow it up with actual words, Komachi turned and made her way out of the shrine.

It was fully dark outside now, leaving the blue glow around Youkai Mountain clearly visible, all the way across Gensokyo. Perhaps just a bit smaller, if her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. A big, impossible-to-miss countdown to the end. Whatever Akyuu thought it would have done to Gensokyo as a whole if they hadn’t stopped it, it still seemed to be pretty effective at tearing apart her friends’ peace of mind. And her own, for that matter. If they weren’t happy, she wasn’t happy. And if that little experiment she'd just wrapped up was any indication, platitudes and reassurances weren't going to be enough to patch up their aching souls.

She'd have to think about it more. She _needed_ to think about it. Karma and afterlives aside, she just couldn't feel good about herself if they all went into the final day with this much turmoil. For now, though, she took into the air toward the gate to the Netherworld, shooting one last lingering glance toward Youkai Mountain and the clock ticking above it.


End file.
